A/N – Thank you so much for all your reviews! This is (definitely) the penultimate chapter, and while I know it's not as good as the last chapter (the last chapter set a bit of a high standard for me to live up to, I think) I hope you enjoy it all the same.
I'm sorry to all of you who were living on the hope that Alennia was not dead. She is. But things will get better – maybe not in this chapter, but it won't end too sad, well, if I write it right then it won't! Anyway – on with the chapter:
Chapter Thirty-Two – Walk, Don't Look Back
Dagonet stood, hidden in the trees on the outskirts of the clearing, his expression unreadable as he watched the scout break down. He could not move, but could only stand there – helpless. She was dead, and now the man who had loved her, and who loved her still, was dying inside. And there was nothing Dagonet could do.
Suddenly, he saw Tristran move. The scout lifted his grief-ravaged face, and stared directly but unseeing, at Dagonet. Dagonet quailed for a moment at the hatred in Tristran's wild eyes, but then realised that the scout had not seen him. He did not seem to see anything as he rose, no longer looking at Alennia's body. He stared around the clearing for a moment, his eyes red from crying, but dry now. The grief had gone, but in its place was a hatred far greater than anything Dagonet had ever seen.
The scout drew his blades, slowly, firmly, and the slow scraping sound as the metal slid from the scabbard made the hairs on the back of Dagonet's neck rise. Tristran looked around the clearing for one last time, before turning abruptly, and setting off at a slow, steady run.
Dagonet hesitated for a moment, his sudden fear of the man that the scout had become, almost matching his grief for Alennia, but then he gave in, and ran into the clearing, dropping down at Alennia's side. The woman who had called him father, lay, a broken mass of blood and flesh, barely resembling the beautiful, feisty woman he had known and loved.
He brushed her hair off her face, and looked down at her peaceful face for a moment, before he slumped forwards over her body, burying his face in his hands. Slowly, the sun rose, illuminating the clearing with fiery golden rays: a sunrise so ironically full of hope and life beside the scene of death and grief.
It was fully light before Dagonet raised his face once more. His face was expressionless, and there was not one sign of grief on his face. 'Why could he not cry?' he asked himself. 'Why could he not let his grief out like any normal person?' And yet it had always been thus: Dagonet had not wept since he had left his home five years earlier, and even now he could find no tears.
Slowly he arranged Alennia's body, wiping some of the dried blood from her cheek, and moving her broken limbs to more normal angles. He supposed her should bury her, or burn her, but he was yet too afraid of the rage that he had seen in Tristran's eyes to risk doing it without him. And so he kept a silent vigil over the body, waiting for the return of Tristran.
Tristran ran, with no thought in his mind but vengeance. He would find the men who had killed Alennia, and he would kill them. As love had once given him wings, now hatred gave him a strength he did not know he possessed, and he chased the Woads, with no indication of weariness. He ran them down, one by one, playing with them, and drawing out their deaths, so that they knew, in their last moment of this earth, why they died.
It was dusk by the time Tristran caught up with the last one. The man had found a horse, but had pushed it too fast from fear, and the horse had tired quickly. Tristran felt no fatigue, and whereas his opponent was sweating and pale, terrified of the man who had calmly cut his companions down one at a time, Tristran still felt the same overpowering rage he had at dawn that moment.
The last of the Woads to fall to Tristran's blade was a tall man – almost a head higher than Tristran, with a muscular body, and dark hair, and at any other time, Tristran would have considered his a decent opponent.
Carden had heard tales of Tristran's ferocity in battle, but nothing prepared him for the sheer rage with which Tristran fought. He had cut Carden's horse's legs from under it, and attacked before he had even had time to rise after his fall. Tristran advanced on the cowering man with short, brutal overhead strokes, and a strength that Carden had never fought against before.
And though Tristran had a hundred chances to finish the match, he did not. Every time a gap opened in Carden's defence, Tristran would nock him with his blade, nothing more, until Carden was covered in long, shallow cuts, and was bleeding profusely.
Eventually Carden's reactions grew to slow to even merit fighting back. He feebly tried to bring his blade up to meet Tristran's stroke, but Tristran flicked the sword aside scornfully, and brought his blade up to rest on Carden's throat.
There was nothing but absolute terror in the tall man's eyes as he gazed into the face of death. Tristran did not move, simply revelling in the look of fear in the man's eyes, but then he whispered one word, as he slid the blade slowly and deliberately into Carden's neck.
Carden tried to scream out, but Tristran neatly severed his vocal chords, and there was a moment, when his eyes bulged and his face went grey, before his body went limp, and he slid off the sword. The last word he had heard on this earth had been the name of the woman he had killed.
Tristran stood, immobile, for a long time after Carden had died, staring off into the distance somewhere. It was done. He had got revenge for Alennia. But instead of an elated feeling, or even a feeling of peace, there was nothing but an emptiness in his heart: an emptiness that none could fill, save Alennia.
Slowly he came to. When he saw the bloody mess that had been Carden his face blanched, and he threw up. He had never before fought so cruelly, and though he was a hardened warrior, who had seen thousands of atrocities before; nothing could prepare him for seeing his own handiwork.
When his stomach had finally finished heaving, Tristran turned away from the body, very deliberately avoiding it. He cleaned his sword off, suddenly feeling very weary, and looked up at the sky. It was beginning to grow dark, and he had left Alennia's body unattended.
Slowly, for exhaustion had finally set in, he started off at a lolloping run, back to her body, leaving the remains of a Woad, mangled beyond recognition, on the ground for the beasts to eat.
Tristran stood in silence, watching the fire grow as it consumed his beloved's body. He had done all he could for her: cleaned her body, smoothed her hair down, and arranged her with her weapons around her, like warriors of old.
He did not know what she had believed in, and having no real beliefs himself, he found himself wanting, needing for something to hang onto. Some assurance that she was at peace. He did not even know if her people burned their dead, and though he could do no more for her, he felt an awful helplessness as he watched her body burn.
He wracked his mind, trying to find the moment when he had gone wrong. Would he have saved her if he had not taken so long tacking his horse up? Or if he had left earlier? Or perhaps he should never have let her go. But no matter how he tried to lay the blame, it was upon his own back that it rested.
Alennia was dead, and Tristran had been the one to cause that death.
Tristran bowed his head, blotting out the heat of the fire on his face, and closed his eyes. He was not a religious man, and had never prayed, but he now formed a thought in his mind, sending it to whichever merciful God could hear his feeble attempt at prayer.
'Please,' he thought desperately. 'Please let her be happy where she it. Please let her be at peace.'
He stood there all night, standing a silent vigil for her while she burned, and at dawn, when the fire had burnt out, and only warm ashes remained, he turned from the clearing, and left, never again looking back at the few precious months of heaven that she had brought him.