"When Irish eyes are smiling…."
Sakaki raised a curious eyebrow. He hadn't heard Nycole sing in a long time, ages perhaps. The man could barely remember the last time he'd actually heard the empath sing. Her voice sounded so beautiful, haunting almost, in it's smooth soprano, lilting with her energy. The song its self seemed to carry her hope and dreams for the future, for Amon and her kin.
"Sure 'tis like the morn in spring." The girl gave a sidestep, dancing slightly in the kitchen. "In the lilt of Irish laughter, you can hear the angels sing."
Geoff smirked as he heard the lyrics from his place on the sofa, attempting to watch a Manchester United game on the tiny television. Nycole always had a sick sense of humor to her. One day, while working in a pet store and gathering feeder fish for a customer, the bartender had even caught the telepath singing the jingle from the Goldfish crackers commercial.
Nycole paused, her lips pursing into a frown of chagrin, stopping in her song and her cooking. "Well… damn."
"What?" Bear inquired.
The telepath shrugged slightly. "It's nothing. I… I just can't seem to remember any of the other lines to that song. Just something about them 'stealing your heart away.'" She smiled and stirred the steaming broth on the stove. "It's like a memory from a dream."
"Aren't all things?"
xxxx
Something stirred, out on the moor.
From the pinnacle of Dun Aengus, all eyes stared out, training their focus on the dark figure, moving this way and that staggering like a drunkard, swaying with every bit of motion. Dusk had already fallen. Under the pale light of a half-moon, none of the Iceni could see whether or not this approaching creature was friend or foe. All they could see was the motion and the slight outline of a bulky form. It didn't make any sense. It was large and massive in size, but didn't seem to be a horse or cow.
Boudica loathed this feeling, being forced to wait and see when the figure drew close. For all she knew, this creature could have been a Praetori decoy.
"Stay sharp," the queen of the Iceni ordered.
The figure was almost upon them, perhaps two hundred meters away. Boudica took up a bow, bent wood and curving shape. Her slender, freckled hand caught an arrow from the cache, one wrapped and bound in cloth, soaked in oil. The warrior tipped the arrow in a flaming torch, lighting the cloth bindings. She drew back, feeling the tension of the bowstring rising up her arm. Muscle and string became out, taught machine. Smoothly, elegantly, Boudica let fly.
All eyes followed the arrow as it streaked through the heavens, a bolt of fire trailing up and into the sky. The arrow arched downward, towards the impossibly large and bulky form in the moor. The bolt slid down, landing the ground neatly.
The flames illuminated the creature, tall, with black wings.
"RIDERS!"
xxxx
Fingertips brushed Amon's face.
He jumped; Nycole stood over him. "Hey."
"Nycole?"
The empath held a bowl of something steaming. She set it gently on the night table with a slight rattle from the spoon. Amon's nostrils caught the warm scent of a broth. Chicken broth, to be precise. Nycole took the spoon and gave the liquid another quick stir.
"Think you could manage to eat something?" the girl asked softly.
"I could." Nycole nodded, giving a quick test of the broth to make sure it wasn't too hot; Amon watched with only mild interest. "Is it true?"
"Is what true?"
The man thought for a moment, wondering the perfect way to ask. "Is the story true?"
Nycole shrugged. "Couldn't tell you."
Amon settled back in after that mild, light lunch, as Nycole continued with the tale.
xxxx
The Iceni Riders were a fierce band, almost rivaling the pure, animalistic rage and energy of the Praetori. The Praetori had been taught by their general financial backer, given saddles and moving stiffly across the land. The Iceni, however, rode bareback, the legs hugging the rolling, tucking muscles of their mounts, feeling every twinge and subtle shift of weight. The Iceni had the advantage of added maneuverability, but, with their foreign saddles, the Praetori were harder to knock from off their horses.
The Iceni figured ways around this. The bow and the spear had always been trusted weapons of the warriors, carried at close. The bows, shaped from wood boated in from far off lands, was pressed and curved, cured for months until the perfect curve formed. If the box was even a hairsbreadth off, they were discarded, burnt and their ashes sprinkled over the farmlands. The spears were treated with the same regard. If the metal wasn't pure enough or the lance head formed with a minor discrepancy, the weapon was shattered. Imperfection of craft was not tolerated. And, thus, they had become discriminating warriors of long ranged and throwing weapons.
But the true heart of the Iceni warrior lay in their knives. Every man, woman, and child of their people now carried them. They were sharp blades, no more than 12 to 15 inches long from tip to end of hilt. Everyday, the warriors checked the blades, sharpening them to a razor's edge, ever ready for a raid from the Praetori. At first, only the warriors did this, carrying knives and honing them as per daily tradition and ritual. However, in those trying days, women and children bore blades, mothers taking a whetstone to the small, 6 inch knives of their own sons and daughters out of fear and paranoia.
It had not always been this way. There had been days when the Praetori didn't exist. The Iceni lived in peace with little more concern than that in regards to the weather, the next good hunt, and the arrival of the fowl in the spring for falconry. Boudica could remember such times fondly, but they were ages past, when things were simpler. She lived alongside her husband, ruling over the Iceni and the people of Inish Mor.
However, once her king died, they came. Foreigners. They invaded the Aran Islands, pilfering the lands for everything they could possibly want. The foreigners pillaged, burnt, and raped, like something from a distant fireside tale for the children. They killed whole families and destroyed entire villages and towns. The foreigners came when Boudica took the throne in her king's place. And, yet, the woman warrior would not stand for this; she could not allow her people to suffer at the hands of those godless sons of pigs that were the foreign devils. Boudica took up arms.
At first, it had been easy to fend off the foreigners. Many of the villagers had fled to the larger fortresses of Inish Mor. Dun Aengus's population swelled, tripling within that first year along. Not many people remained out in the farms on the more, save the ones clustered tightly about the stone fortresses. Each city just grew more vigilant, always keeping at least three or four pairs of eyes gazing out on the grassy expanses, searching for approaching foreign forces.
Then, the Praetori emerged.
Even now, as the Riders assembled, taking to their mounts and cantering out from the citadel of Dun Aengus, Boudica couldn't be sure the approaching thing wasn't some sort of Praetori trick or attack. The gates slammed shut with a heavy thump behind the Riders as per the Iceni queen's orders. Guards assembled along the outer flanks of the stonewall, sinking between the turrets and drawing back their bows with eerie creaks of wood.
Boudica had to be sure.
She led the Riders; the woman had to. It was the place of the rightful ruler of the Iceni to fight alongside their people, to never allow Iceni to go into a battle he- or she, in Boudica's case- would not enter themselves. And, so, the queen charged out, ahead of the other warriors on her dark, liver bay, drafter-type horse, her sprear in one hand and the hunter green standard of people in the other.
Boudica gave a quick glance over her shoulder as they went. The Riders looked so weak, but the woman knew better than to discredit them. When the Praetori came, they took or killed just about every man between the ages of fifteen and fifty, leaving but boys and elders to protect the people and what was left of Iceni. Merric was among the remaining men, and even his face still held the failing remnants of childhood innocence and purity.
"Flanking!"
The woman didn't need to look over her shoulder. The changing, shifting direction of hoof beats gave her signal to the altering formation of the Riders behind her, readying themselves for the possibility of battle. Still, they approaching, circling and swirling around the dark figure.
Boudica pulled up her dark steed before the shadowy form, pointing her lance down at it. "Speak if you be friend."
"I am…"
Merric's voice. It had been so very long since Boudica had heard him. He sounded so sad and distant, but the queen's heart leapt at the thought of his continued life. She felt like jumping right off her mount and hugging him, embracing him right in front of the other riders. Now that she looked, Boudica could tell that the bulk of his form came not from cloaks or armor, but from those black wings of his, sticking out of his back awkwardly, like a fledgling hawk.
"Merric…" Boudica shook off her shock and happiness. "Are you injured?"
"Slightly." Merric lifted his head into the pale moonlight, bathing his features in that blue light and grimacing a bit. "But a scratch. Mairi?"
"Safe, at Dun Aengus."
Merric's face grew ashen. "And us?"
"What?" Boudica started, feeling fear ebb and rise within her throat.
"It's too late…" Merric lamented.
Boudica spurred her horse around, glancing to the hilltops just as the shadows formed, rising atop each rolling landmass. Riders. Thousands of them. Boudica gasped as their horses bobbed heads and pawed at the earth, ready and practically excited for battle, to feel the bodies fallen beneath their thrashing, driving hooves. They stood in long, silent lines, circling around the Iceni. It was a trap, one the queen should have seen sooner.
Her eyes flew up to what seemed like the general, to the banner fluttering in the breeze.
"PRAETORI!"
xxxx
Um… yeah.
