5th Day of Needfest, 566 CY
Orzdi, The Lone Heath, Great Kingdom of Aerdy
Aslan couldn't help but note with resignation that the fog had lifted just in time for it not to make any difference.
Accompanied by Thornton and several other members of his patrol, he, Argo and Caroline had been trekking northeastwards (the opposite direction from where they had been heading) for about four hours yesterday and after breaking camp this morning, another four hours today before the rebel encampment finally showed itself before them.
Orzdi seemed, at least to Aslan, to exemplify the resiliency of the human spirit. Eight or nine patches of dry ground, each large enough for a half-dozen or more structures, had been cleared of debris and now each sported several large tents, although the paladin noted large piles of tarp-covered cut logs, apparently intended for the future construction of cabins. Numerous tree stumps dotted the aquatic landscape.
The islands were not adjacent to each other but were connected by wooden boardwalks which were set on piles.
Glancing upwards, Aslan was surprised to see that, like elves, there were people placed in several of the trees in wooden structures. However, even the biggest trees here lacked the massive trunk girth of the forest oaks, roanwoods and ipt trees that elves favored for their houses. Orzdi sported only round platforms, five feet wide at best, that circled the trunks at about fifty to sixty feet in height. While some goods seemed to be stored there, they seemed to be used primarily as archery platforms, as each sported at least one sling or bow-wielding figure eyeing the new arrivals cautiously.
The paladin noticed one dry patch seemed to have been set aside for raising animals. He saw several beaver and mink being tended to alongside the more familiar ducks and chickens.
The humans (and almost everyone Aslan saw was human, though he did note one rather haggard-looking gnome jogging along a boardwalk from one island to another) were Oeridian in race, but that was only to be expected, given their location. Many were like Argo (tan skin, squarish face and strong jawline); others had a more olive complexion and rounder faces, like Nesco). Most were a mix, but everyone wore their hair short- a logical convenience in a swamp, thought Aslan.
Most of the men were bearded; not only for convenience but, as Thornton had explained, it left less exposed skin for the dreaded "skeeters" to feast on.
Some people were cooking over cauldrons; others were drying hides or unfamiliar plants over wooden frameworks. Some were stitching pelts, whittling arrows or doing whatever tasks needed to be done. The division of labor amongst the genders seemed to be pretty equal.
The paladin pegged the total population, based on what he could see, at about eighty to ninety. Less than half of that were men and women of prime fighting age.
A quick glance behind him showed Argo's mouth set in a grim line as his auburn eyes took in everything.
He's seeing what they've lost, thought the paladin.
Thornton had led them onto the largest island, where he bade the trio to stop.
Now the inhabitants were starting to approach.
They were a motley lot, as might be expected of anyone who had been living in a swamp for years. Curious eyes were examining them under faces crossed by lined, weathered skin that had been stained by years of exposure to swamp mud.
They came up in small groups, talking nervously but excitingly to each other as they did so; friends to friends and partners, parents to children. From what Aslan could hear, only some of them knew Argo and Caroline personally; others had merely been told about them. The paladin could hear a few wondering to their companions where Gastar and Yenom were.
Aslan braced himself as the crowd came up, thinking that he'd almost rather be engulfed again by "skeeters" when a loud but raspy voice rang out, carrying over the din.
"Let 'em breathe, people! It's poor manners to scare your saviors off the moment they arrive!"
Standing outside the only complete wooden cabin that Orzdi currently boasted, surrounded by several warriors, stood a man who Aslan recognized on sight despite never having set eyes on before. The paladin didn't even need to look over at Argo and Caroline for confirmation.
Argo Bigfellow Senior was as tall as his son. He also had the same broad, muscular build. despite being close to, if not over, the half-century mark. Alone among the population of Orzdi, his hair (the same dirty blonde as Argo's) was worn long; past his shoulders, although it was partially braided. Numerous small, healed scars were visible on his face.
The elder ranger, clad in leather armor that was covered in a black fur coat, moved to greet the new arrivals, a broad smile on his face.
"Aslan."
The paladin turned to see Argo Bigfellow Junior looking at him. The smile that was still plastered on his face for the crowd's benefit was as fake as fool's gold, never reaching his auburn eyes. His friend's expression seemed to be carrying all of the disappointment and frustration that had building up over the past few days.
"Elrohir made a mistake," Argo said, shaking his head and dropping even the pretense of a smile now for a deep scowl.
"I'm nobody's savior."
"Son!"
Aslan couldn't help but notice the hesitation in the elder Bigfellow's eyes even as he came up and grasped his son by both shoulders.
Argo, for his part, seemed to be awash in mixed emotions even as he returned the gesture, his face once again sporting a smile.
"It's good to see you again, father."
"And Caroline Pelaides!" the senior Bigfellow bellowed, releasing his son and turning to face the young woman. "Are the rumors true? Have you-"
Caroline's nod and deep, genuine smile were enough to cut off the Orzdi leader.
"Yes," she said. "I'm your daughter-in-law now."
"Wonderful!" Argo Senior roared and enveloped Caroline in a bear hug. "You can never have too many Bigfellows!"
"So," he continued, leaning back but still holding Caroline in his arms. "Children?"
Aslan saw the young woman's mouth tighten and, just for a moment, a flash of pain in her hazel eyes.
"No," she said quietly, forcing the smile to remain on her face by sheer effort. "No children."
"Not to worry," the elder ranger said, releasing Caroline and beaming at her. "There'll always be time for them later, eh?"
He turned his attention to Aslan without waiting for a response.
"And you must be the famous Aslan the paladin!" he exclaimed while clasping Aslan's right hand in both of his own and shaking it vigorously.
Aslan wondered if this man even had a quiet voice.
"Just Aslan will do fine, thank you," he replied with a polite smile while disengaging his hand and crossing his arms. A momentary recollection of him saying the exact same thing to Aimee some five months ago flashed through his mind.
"I cannot thank you enough for your aid, Just Aslan!" Argo Senior replied without missing a beat. "Thornton!" he said, turning to the man standing nearby, "I need to speak with my son in private. Please take Caroline and Just Aslan here to the main tent where they can rest for a spell. Give them food, water.. whatever they desire and we have is theirs!"
Argo Junior held up his hand at this point.
"Caroline stays with me."
His smile was gone.
The grin slid off his Argo Senior's face as well. For a moment, father and son regarded each other in silence.
Then the elder ranger nodded. For the first time, his boisterous voice grew softer.
"Of course, son. Of course."
Argo Bigfellow Junior, clutching his wife's hand, took a look around as they entered what he'd heard the Orzdi residents call the Command Hut. It was a simple two-room affair and he couldn't help but notice that the general size and layout was almost identical to his and Caroline's house back home. A quick glance at Caroline's face with its split-second smile as her eyes met his told him she'd made the connection as well.
"Take a seat," his father said, gesturing to the wooden chairs seated around a rectangular table that took up the bulk of the entrance room. Argo and Caroline did so, grateful for the heat coming from the fireplace near them set into the right-hand wall. It was the first real heat they'd had since their arrival in the Lone Heath, and they rubbed their hands together in front of the flames to let circulation return to them.
Argo Senior smiled knowingly as he removed his furred overcoat and took a seat opposite his son and daughter-in-law. Argo noticed a crude map of the Lone Heath was painted onto a section of hide spread out across the table. Several pebbles and twigs had been placed on the map; obviously signifying something but the younger Bigfellow couldn't determine what.
"So," Argo Senior said, placing his hands on the table in front of him, fingers clasped together. "Where do we start?"
"We start," Argo Junior responded, mimicking his father's gesture and keeping his own voice even and level, "by reminding you that Caroline and I are only here because we're dead."
That netted a raised eyebrow and tilted head.
Argo explained the situation; the basics of his friends' battles against the Emerald Serpent and that Elrohir's plan depended on their enemies thinking the big ranger and his wife had been killed by the Gray Serpent. The necessity of keeping them out of sight was the only reason that they had been available for Aslan to teleport them here to the Lone Heath.
"And when we have finally triumphed over our adversaries," Argo concluded, omitting the word hopefully from his speech if not from his mind, "Aslan will bring Gastar and Yenom back here along with the supplies from the caravan and then Caroline and I will be leaving."
He leaned back in his chair. "In the meantime, we are at your disposal, father. How can we help?"
There was a long silence. Argo knew his father well enough to know that the elder Bigfellow was disappointed. He sensed his father had been hoping if perhaps not expecting that his son would be here for longer; perhaps even that he had returned for good.
"When is your funeral?" the elder ranger asked, keeping his face neutral.
"Tomorrow."
"At least you'll get to attend your own wake," Argo Senior noted, the tip of a smile showing.
Argo Junior allowed himself a return smile.
"And you're still blunt, to the point and completely tactless," his father said, straightening up in his chair and eyeing Argo critically. "Haven't forgotten everything I taught you, at least."
"Hope you're still the same," Argo responded, letting the smile fade.
After a moment, the rebel leader nodded.
"I am," he said. "Here's my situation, son. You know what happened to our old encampment. Those supplies are needed to keep the survivors alive and to give us the barest chance against the Overking's troops when they come for us here- and they will," he added. "But they won't be enough."
"What will be?" Argo asked.
"Training," his father replied. "The abilities of skilled, experienced rangers are worth their weight in platinum to me and we lost a lot of good men and women in the raid."
The elder Bigfellow's eyes, auburn like his son's, seemed to burn with both regret and purpose.
"Thornton and Gastar are the two most experienced rangers I've got left, if that gives you an idea and they were both on par with you; or at least they were when you left."
Argo Junior nodded while thinking. There'd been at least a half-dozen rangers as or more experienced than he had been back then; they were all obviously dead now, he thought with a stab of regret.
"Every day Thornton or I spend in training young rangers is a day we can't be out on patrol or hunting," Argo Senior went on, "and right now we can't skimp on either activity."
Argo Junior paused as he digested that.
He then glanced over at Caroline and couldn't help but smile as he saw she had already been on the same track and given him a brief nod of assent.
The big ranger never stopped being grateful for the empathy that the two of them shared.
"Here's what we can offer you," Argo said, returning his gaze to meet that of his father. "If circumstances permit, I'll stay for a week and train up a ranger, while Caroline here can train up one of your fighters; I'm sure you've got no shortage of young people needing that, as well."
Argo Senior was silent. The elder ranger sighed, not looking at his son.
"Father," Argo said in a warning tone while still straining for a sense of decorum, "please don't get greedy. We can only-"
"Greedy?"
Argo Bigfellow Senior abruptly stood up, both palms planted face down on the table as his auburn eyes, blazing almost red now, bore into those of his son. "Is that what you think I'm being?"
The younger ranger spread his hands apart. "I'm sorry, father. Wrong word: you know I'm infamous for that. "I'm just saying that-"
The sound of the elder Bigfellow's meaty hand slamming down on the table startled even Argo, who had half-expected, half-dreaded it.
"Yes, I'm greedy, son," Argo Senior seethed. "I want nothing less than to protect the lives of everyone under my charge, men, women and children. I want that and I won't accept a copper less! Someone has to be leader here and it looks like after all these years it's still up to me!"
The dam broke.
Caroline's pleas for restraint fell on two sets of deaf ears as Argo Bigfellow Junior jumped to his feet as well.
"Here we go again!" he roared in a voice to match that of his father. "Same as it ever was! You want me to take up your mantle! Well, I told you five years ago I wouldn't do it and looks like I've got to tell you again today!"
"I'd hoped you'd matured!" Argo Senior shot back. "With a wife now and hopefully children in your future, I'd of thought concern for someone other than yourself might have penetrated that thick skull for once, but clearly I was wrong. You're so damn set on being Argo the Rebel that you've forgotten to be Argo the Human!"
"I'll tell you what I'm not!" Argo Junior shouted back. "I'm not Argo Bigfellow the First; the Ranger Lord so set on recalling the glory days of his family, so insanely focused on returning to the Celestial House of Garasteth that he altered his own name just so he could still bestow it upon his child when his wife gave him a daughter instead of the son he always wanted!"
The door opened and a guard no older than Caroline peered in but a wordless yell from his leader sent the young man back outside, slamming the door behind him.
Argo, not caring, pressed on.
"Of course, you got lucky the second time around, but neither of us were interested in going back to the way things were! We can't, father! The Great Kingdom has been hopelessly corrupt since House Naelax assumed the Malachite Throne over a century ago, and there's no sign that's going to change!"
"I did mature, father," Argo finished, his voice dropping below a shout but still loud enough to fill the Command Hut, "but I did that before I ever left here. I saw what you refused to see; that we would be on the defensive forever; always hiding out."
He took a deep breath.
"I grew up, father."
Argo Bigfellow Senior, breathing heavily, looked at his only son with an expression of sorrow.
"No, son," he said. "You gave up."
Silence returned, but only for a few seconds.
"You want to save these people, father?" Argo Junior asked, his voice weary now but still forceful. "Is saving them all you care about? Then give us a month or so and Aslan will teleport every last one of them out of here to safety!"
"To where?" Argo Senior asked shortly.
"Does it matter?" his son shot back. "Anywhere outside of the Great Kingdom! "Nyrond, the Pale, the Iron League; hell, to Furyondy even! It's the most peaceful and prosperous kingdom in all the Flanaess!"
The elder ranger did not reply.
"Yes, they'll have to start over in an unfamiliar land, but when all you've been familiar with for years is a goddamn swamp, I'd say that's a big improvement!"
The elder ranger still stood, breathing heavily, his eyes downcast.
"That's defeat," he said at last, his voice as quiet as Argo and Caroline had heard it yet.
"That's survival, father," Argo Junior said, his voice now reduced in volume as well. "Your dream of being a savior to the people who depend upon you will finally be fulfilled."
His father's face shot up, the angry glare back now and his body tensing up again
But he still said nothing.
"But your dream of going back; your dream of a glorious rebellion restoring the name of Bigfellow to its former zenith will be dead forever," Argo continued. "Which dream do you want, father?"
With what seemed like an agonizing slowness, Argo Bigfellow Senior settled himself back in his chair and cradled his head in his hands.
Argo Junior was about to speak again when he felt a hand on his shoulder and looked around to see Caroline standing beside him, concern and worry plain to see on her face.
And Argo knew it was for him, but not only him.
He took a deep breath and tried to let the anger which had risen so suddenly and with so much venom drain away, or at least as much of it as he could.
The big ranger resumed his seat as well.
Eventually, Argo Bigfellow Senior raised his head to look at his son again and when he did, Argo saw that the anger had drained away there as well, leaving only a deep fatigue of the soul.
"What about Argoria, son?" he asked, his raspy voice now only a fraction over a whisper.
A long silence.
"I don't know, father," Argo Junior replied at length, looking and sounding as woebegone as his sire now. "Are you certain it's her?'
The elder ranger nodded. "Yes, son. It's her."
Argo considered.
"She died years ago. That means she was resurrected, not raised. Some very powerful High Priest must have done it; do we have any clue who?"
The very small and momentary smile on his father's face was, Argo realized after the fact, because he had used the word we instead of the word you.
But he made no move to correct himself.
"No," Argo Senior said, "but those two devils are still with her."
"Mr. Goth."
Argo looked over again at Caroline, who had spoken the name that neither her husband nor her father-in-law seemed able to.
The harvester of souls who may or may not have been responsible for Argoria Bigfellow's damnation in the first place.
"Yes," the latter acknowledged, "and that invisible fiend as well; the one they call Dogai."
His eyes again held those of his son.
"The one who killed me."
All three inhabitants of the Command Hut went silent.
"We don't have any clerics here anymore capable of raising the dead, son," Argo Senior eventually spoke up again. "Yenom is the most powerful priest we've had here in years and that feat of devotion is beyond even him."
Argo Bigfellow Junior hesitated and when he next spoke his voice was devoid of the confidence that it had retained since the very beginning of this conversation.
"So what do we do, father?" he asked, sounding younger to his own ears than he had for over five years.
His father's eyes now seemed to hold more sadness than he ever remembered them capable of holding.
The worst he'd ever seen his father was right after the death of his wife; Argo's mother, when she'd perished on a hunting expedition seven years after he'd been born.
He looked worse now.
"My daughter," he said, his raspy voice on the very edge of cracking. "Your sister, son. We either save her together…"
Argo heard his wife gasp in terror.
Or maybe, it had been himself.
"… or we kill her together."