Chapter 5 "A Breaking"

The Harvest Festival ended and the next morning the Aybaras were up before the dawn and on their way back down Whitechild road as soon as the sun was visible above the dewy and frigid fall morning. Jorle was handling the reins of the mule team and chattering as excitedly and incessantly as the girls. Wyland sat astride Zarine following his family on the cart, and keeping enough distance that the intense recount of every detail of the festival that his children were engaged in was no more than a high pitched rumble punctuated with the occasional squeak that he was sure could be heard all the way back in the village. He let Zarine have her head and the mare plodded along after the cart. Every so often he noticed Detra looking back at him with a smile, her eyes twinkling as no others could. He had to stop looking at her, she distracted him too much; how did she expect him to get any thinking done while she was flashing those eyes at him with those smiles? He let his eyes roam the wood beside the road, spotting a squirrel running up an evergreen and occasionally a songbird lilting a melody amongst the branches. His mind was occupied; reliving his conversation with the Servant.

Wyland had done his best to be polite while still making sure that the man understood that he wasn't buying any of the story. And he was not going anywhere.

"Servant Prosht, I am very sorry. You have wasted your time in coming here. I don't know what is going on in the world, and I don't know who or what the world needs, but I do know that it is not me. My children need me, my wife needs me, and I them. I'll be staying where I truly am needed. I hope that you and the world find whoever it is that can help you."

The Black Brother's eyes took on an intense cast that spoke of the hardest things: steel and stone and cuendillar. "I am not going to take you back to the Towers against your will, Wyland. The world does not need a prisoner, it needs a champion. But know this: The Wheel weaves us into the Pattern, and neither asks the permission of the thread. You are destined to fight in this battle, struggle against it as you may, but those the pattern has chosen to shape history cannot escape it. If you were just a simple farmer you could choose any path you like, but you are not. Walk willingly along your path or suffer the Wheel's forcing."

Wyland told Detra that he needed to go hunting to sort some things out for himself and left Jorle and the girls with her to settle everything in: curry and stable Zarine and the mules, unload the supplies and organize the cellar. He needed to clear his head. He grabbed his hunting knife, his longbow and quiver then let his feet lead him into the woods. As he stalked through the forest that had yielded game to his arrows since childhood, he thought back to his life outside, his life in the foreign world beyond the Fifth. The brothers in arms he had grown to love as a family. The mentor who had taught him so much. The things he had learned, the places he had seen. But mostly his memories kept returning to the lives he had seen ended, the lives he had ended himself, the blood and the pain and the entrails and the wails from the]ose already dead. The horror. These memories confirmed to him that he had made a good decision. He would not leave his home once again to go out into the wide world and suffer the tragedies of war. A war that he still could not believe was real. If the man, Prosht, had not so obviously been a Servant of All, part of the Black Brothers and White Sisters, Wyland would have laughed him out of the Inn. Ancient evil and monstrous foes indeed! Every child knew the Dragon led the world against the Dark One and ended all that terror so long ago that his greatfather's greatfather's greatfather had learned it from his greatfather who had grown up with the same knowledge. Talk of 'The Light' and darkness was just a comfortable cloak that one was given from their parents and in turn passed to their children out of tradition. Whatever evil the Dark One had inflicted on the world had ended at the Last Battle.

Mulling over all the things that were vying for his attention he almost stumbled right on top of a young buck that was nosing the ground in a clearing just ahead of him. He was lucky that he happened to glance up just in time to stop himself from startling the four-prong prize. Wyland was not the best archer in the Fifth, but he was better than most and this buck was a bare twenty paces from him. He raised his bow, silenced his thoughts, took a slow breath, drew back, and released. As he watched the arrow leave his bow, speeding straight for the hart's heart, a branch came crashing down from above and would have split his scalp if he hadn't jumped back as soon as he heard it. Unfortunately the deer jumped forward as soon as he heard it and Wyland's arrow went sailing through the air where the kill shot had been a moment before. Wyland stepped over his bane, the branch, and went to retrieve his arrow. He found it laying on the forest floor, the broadhead split in two. His arrow, that should have stuck in the heart of his dinner, had found the only rock that stood high enough to get in the way for a league in any direction. And his steel broadhead had yielded against the stone. It was time to go home. Today was obviously not a good day to hunt. He left the arrow, broken head and all, turned for home, and made for the cottage. There were hours left yet for hunting, but Wyland was a bit shaken by his shot at the deer seemingly foiled by the very hand of the Creator. He did not waste his time getting home; the woods were normally a place of peace and reflection and solitude, but now he wanted nothing more than to be out of the forest, that and maybe a mug of ale. As he stepped out of the woods into the clearing around his farm he decided to go talk to Parn. His old friend always lent a good ear to help him settle his mind.

Opening the stable door he set his bow and quiver inside and took Zarine's saddle from the shelf. As he saddled the pullhorse he considered going inside to tell Detra where he was going, but decided to just head on and make sure he returned by dusk so she would not begin to worry. He walked Zarine out to Whitechild road and then mounted and started off at a trot, and feeling a need to reach the Alver farm quickly, he dug his heels in until they were racing along the road at a full gallop. There are not many sights or sounds to compare with an Andoran Pullhorse galloping; it is a thundering spectacle that can turn a simple ride into an adventure. He slowed to a trot a league from the Alver farm, then reined up and dismounted, walking Zarine the last stretch to cool her off.

The race he had just run to stay mounted on his over-sized horse had raised his spirits; his hair was wind-blown, his face flushed, and he was smiling. Leaving Zarine to graze in the yard he went to the door and knocked. After knocking and waiting thrice he had to admit to himself that the Alvers must have stayed in the village an extra night.

Turning back to Zarine he said, "Come on girl, let's go home. I had hoped to have things worked out better in my head before I explained it all to Detra, but things are just not working out today. Let's you and I walk a while and maybe you listening to my troubles will be enough."

He grabbed the reins and left out on foot. Talking everything over with Zarine on the way home did prove helpful. She was an exceptional listener. By the time he walked her back into her stall and brushed her down it was starting to get dark and he felt better about what he was going to say to Detra. His eyes were adjusting to the twilight when he realized there was no light coming from the window by the back door. He would have expected Detra to be in the middle of cooking dinner. He returned to the stable and took a lamp down from the wall, used his knife and the flint kept on a shelf next to the lamp to light it. As Wyland entered the kitchen through the back door he hung the lamp on a peg on the wall and bent down pull his boots off.

The floor was wet…and red. He jerked his head up, and there under the table where she had served her family dinner every night was his Detra lying on her side, one arm pinned underneath her and the other reaching toward a gash across her throat that couldn't really be there.

"NOOOOOOO!" He screamed

Flinging the table out of his way he knelt in his wife's blood and gently took her face in his hands and looked into her eyes. The eyes that smiled at him in his youth and always sent a thrill through his body, the eyes that had shown him the truth and depth of a love that had not ebbed no matter what life brought, the eyes that had not grown older but more beautiful, were staring up at him, lifeless. His hands began to shake so badly that he took them away from her face, unable to watch her pale waxen features tremble from his convulsions.

He began to rise, comprehension was a mountain cat preparing to pounce on him, he knew it was there and that it would come crashing down on him with lethal force, but his mind refused to admit it was there because the alternative was death. A whisper of movement behind him brought enough clarity for him to react, spinning he glimpsed steel flashing toward him, he sidestepped and quicker than thought slammed his hunting knife into the heart of the murderer. His attacker collapsed and he bent over to roll the body over and retrieve his knife before he searched the house to make sure the kids were all right and that there was not another murderer in the house. When he looked into the face of his wife's killer the mountain cat pounced with more violence than his stomach or his mind could handle. He wretched up the contents of his belly, and passed out before he could remove his knife from Avilene's chest.