Chapter 23: Where Legends Call
…
"But, I thought you said the Bulblins didn't attack Whittleton!" Link called after Meilont, who had run down the stairs faster than him.
"Tha' because I believed it," Meilont replied in a rushed voice. "They appear ta have changed their minds. Now hurry."
Link grunted under the strain of having to move his injured body in a hurried manner. His muscles were stiff from all of the training and exploring he had done earlier that day. He kept moving, though. The effort left him hunched at the base of the stairs, trying to take breath into a body plagued by constant throbbing. His eyes scanned the kitchen, but he could barely make out the large table and the staircase in the soft light produced by the candle sitting on the edge of the table closest to them. "Why?"
"How d' I know?" Meilont told him as she moved under the stairs. There, she wrenched open the lid to a chest, banging it against the wall. Her arms dug through the contents (which sounded like a bunch of metal tools to Link) until she pulled out her sword and the same double-bit axe Talein had been carrying when they first met. The axe looked curious, though; Link recalled the handle being longer. It was not until Meilont worked it when Link realized that the handle had a joint in the middle, allowing it to fold up on itself. She double-checked that the latch on the handle was secure before she set it next to the chest so that she could fasten her sword around her waist.
Seeing her reach for her bow and quiver set next to the chest finally put the gears of thought in Link's head into motion. "W-wait a minute," he said, suddenly dismayed by the way she armed herself. "Are… are you getting ready to fight?!"
"O' course I am!" she replied in an annoyed tone, buckling her quiver to her back. "I'm a' the right age. I have ta be out there!"
Link's mind blanked. He wanted to tell her not to go, that she could not go. But he could not justify it. As he watched her test the string on her bow, he realized that he helped this attitude. All that practice, practice that he did not believe that she would ever have to put to the test… She really was about to go into battle!
"Don' think I'm leavin' yeh unprotected," she told him, reaching back into the chest. Link craned his neck to see, but his eyes only fell on the item once she offered it to him. It was a dagger. Ornate, to be sure, with a crimson hilt and matching sheath capped in silver shaped like leaves. But as Link took it, he found it to be light, as if it was made of air. He pulled the blade, finding it to be a little worn. "Was ma mother's. She left i' here when she wen' ta Library Town. Don' lose it."
"B-but I don't know how to fight!" Link argued, the color draining from his face.
"Yer no' gonna fight, Link," she told him as she slammed the lid down on the chest. "The woods should be safe for yeh 'til we take care o' the problem. Yeh'll be goin' with the children, the older folk, an' the injured."
"Meilont, hurry!" Talein's voice called from the front door.
Meilont hefted the axe onto her shoulder. "C'mon. We have ta hurry." Link clutched the dagger against his chest with both hands and hustled after Meilont out the front door.
Outside, in a place where one could only tell the time of day with a clock, night made a definite difference on the town. To Link, it felt as if something had swallowed all light. Talein stood near the doorway, holding a small oil lantern in one hand. The orange flame cast strong against one half of his body, while the other half simply existed as part of the darkness. Similar dots of people wandered around the tree houses. To Link's left, the south part of town, a line of torches had been set up on the inside of a wall made of logs that Link had never seen before.
"Where'd that come from?" he asked Talein.
"Defense wall," Talein told him. "We pu' it up in case o' attack."
Link was still at a loss for the presence of something so big being put up without him noticing. "W-when?"
"'Bout five minutes ago, when we found out the Bulblins were attackin'." He pointed in the opposite direction of the wall. Link followed his line of sight to a collection of lights forming among the trees of the woods to the north. "Go with 'em. Yeh'll no' be much good here."
"Link!" The call came from the direction of the wall. Turning, he saw Dissal and Lura running towards him. Dissal held a lantern up so that Link could see his face. "Yer goin' ta the woods, right?"
"Uh…" Link glanced back at Talein and received a cross look. "Y-yeah, I'm going."
"Good. We have a light. Yeh can follow us."
Link spun to say something to Meilont, but he met a concentrating look as she focused on the bow in her hand. Although he wanted to stop her from fighting, he still could not find a valid reason as well as the words to put that reason before her. Lura and Dissal each took one of his hands, and he found himself being dragged away before he could think of anything.
The walk to join those hiding in the woods seemed treacherous to Link. With the deep darkness before him obscuring everything, he found himself glad that Dissal had a lantern to light the way. Still, they had to go quite a way to reach the others, such was their progress into the woods already. It was not for a few minutes after crossing into the woods that they finally reached the group. Link was amazed by how quickly the people of Whittleton had moved to get ready. Not only did they have a large wall in the middle of the town standing mere minutes after discovering the impending attack, but most of the elderly and injured had already made quite some progress into the woods. They appeared well-prepared, too; those who were injured but looked well enough to fight held smaller weapons, swords, knives, or just some rusty chain, in preparation for the defense line behind them to break. One man near Link and his companions, a leaner man about as tall as Talein and wearing bare wrapping around his mid-section, appeared to be sporting a blacksmith's work hammer. Link also saw that an elderly woman, supporting what he assumed was her crippled husband, wore a dagger at her side similar to the one Meilont had given him.
In fact, the thought of the dagger prompted him to pull it from its sheath to look at it again. It glowed brighter in Dissal's lantern light, but Link could only find himself frowning at it. Even if he could not use it, he wished he had a real weapon and not some old dagger that looked to have been poorly cared for. At the same time, he feared having to use this, as it meant that those who stayed behind to defend their homes and families had failed.
"A'righ' there, Link?"
Link searched the faces around him until he saw Doctor Beld among them. "Are you here to keep an eye on the injured?"
"Well, they won' take care o' themselves," the doctor pointed out in an irate tone. "'Ow's yeh wounds?"
"Doing better," Link nodded. "I can move much more now."
"Din' stah' nothin' 'ere now," he replied, removing a fresh roll of bandage cloth from the bag he held. "I won' beh savin' yeh."
"I'll be all right."
"S'wha' I though' a few days 'go," he mumbled as he walked away.
"I don' think he's gonna forgive you for tha' whole thin' before," Dissal commented.
Link sighed. "That's fine; I'm not sure I've forgiven myself for it."
"Yer no' mad a' yerself, are yeh?" Lura asked.
"Disappointed mostly. I'll be fine," Link answered while his eyes wandered about. The group had halted among the trees, making a clear line of sight on someone difficult with all of the vegetation around, dead though it was. There were no particular comforts nearby; people either leaned against the trees or sat on the ground. No one carried much more than the clothes on their backs, the only exception being Doctor Beld and his clanking instrument bag. Children huddled together or around an adult with wide eyes, not the sort you find on a frightened child but on a person maintaining a good vigil. The townsfolk around him stood tall (well, those that could stand on their own, at least) with weapons in hand in case. Link could feel the charge of duty, the heat of anticipation, in the air around him. He never imagined that all of their practice and preparation had gone this far. It was almost like being surrounded by airmen again.
But he noticed something. Granted, he did not quite know all of the residents in Whittleton (he was lucky enough to remember the chief officers on the Grand Sails; such was the power of his memory), he still could not shake the feeling that someone was missing. It eventually came to him, but not before he started recognizing other faces in the group. More specifically, he recognized the boys that had chased Dissal up a dead tree three days ago. One, two, three…
One was missing. While three of the four huddled around an old woman handing out baked snacks, Link found that their leader, the plump boy, was nowhere in immediate sight. For confirmation, he nudged Dissal's shoulder. "Hey, Dissal? Where's that boy at?"
Dissal gave Link a confused look, holding up the lantern to better see his face. "What boy?"
"The one I tried commanding a few days back. The pudgy one."
"Yeh mean Gwait?" Lura asked.
Link was not sure, so he only gave a shrug. "His friends are over there."
Both followed the direction of his nod. Upon discovering that the same boy Link referred to was missing, all three of them looked about the area.
"Gwait's gone," Dissal finally said. "Bi' rare o' 'im no' ta be aroun' 'is goons." Link turned back towards the town to see if any more people were joining the group. But only the darkened silhouettes of the surrounding trees framed the small, glowing form of the defense wall in the distance.
"Look," Lura said, tugging the sleeve on Link's borrowed shirt. Link's eyes traced the direction she indicated with a finger. Barely visible between the dead trees over quite a distance from the group, he saw a handful of sparks flying like the flint trigger on an unloaded pistol. It seemed like a miracle that Lura had noticed it at all; for anyone else who did not know it was there, their eyes might simply pass over the quiet flashes. "Coul' tha' be him?"
"I… suppose," Link replied.
"Maybe we shoul' take a look," Dissal said. "Jus' in case."
Link's face scrunched as he looked back to the group in search of Doctor Beld. As much as he did not like Gwait, he did not want to abandon the boy in case he was hurt. So if he was going to go searching for him, he did not want the doctor to see him sneaking away.
Not finding the doctor in sight, he turned to Dissal and whispered, "I'll go look."
"We're comin' with yeh," Lura replied.
Dissal gave her a worried look. "Who? Yeh and me?"
"He migh' need help," Lura told him in a factual tone.
Link pursed his lips, not sure if he should take them along. Certainly, the woods were safe; they had to be if half of the town was hiding in them. There was also his condition to consider. Although Link had regained enough mobility that it did not hurt him to walk somewhere, he might not be able to help if trouble started. Dissal and Lura could be extra hands if it came to something that might provoke his injuries. Still, there was a problem.
"What about your lantern?" Link asked Dissal. "We can't have it lit, or else people will see us. And you can't put it out because you might not be able to light it again in the dark."
"Nothin' ta worry abou'," Dissal whispered back.
He held up the lantern for Link to see. Unlike the box-shaped lamps used on the Island Sonata, this lantern was cylindrical with a handle at the top. Light peered through slots in the metal cylinder, eight in total. Link watched as, one by one, Dissal slid a tab at the top of each slot. A plate moved to fill each slot, blanking out the lantern until Dissal had only one slot open. He held the lantern so that the single beam of light traced along the ground in the direction of the sparks. He mouthed "follow me" to Link and began walking with Lura in close tow. Link glanced back at the rest of the group to see if anyone was watching them. Finding their escape free of wandering eyes, he followed the two children.
Moving through the woods seemed worse than when he first entered. Dissal led his sister and Link through thorn bushes without a second thought, while Link could feel sharp branches scratching his skin through his trousers. A couple of times, Link had to tell Dissal to slow down because something had snagged his clothes. In addition to that, moving through the quiet woods without all of the ambient light around them gave Link a sense of foreboding, like something was about to happen. These woods were nothing like the port-side arboretums he had seen while traveling on the Grand Sails. There was no frightened bird flight, no scurry of little animals about them while they walked, like the creatures that had lived in these woods had disappeared long ago. Of course, that would only make sense. What, besides the residents of Whittleton, would want to live in such a dry place?
They finally happened upon a small clearing. Their light fell upon Gwait, the plump boy, who dropped the lantern he had been frantically trying to ignite while jumping to his feet. Eyes wide, he grabbed for a sword on the ground and attempted to pull it.
"Easy, Gwait," Dissal said. "I's me."
Gwait's eyes narrowed as he tried to look past the lantern light. "Dissaw?"
"What're you doing out here?" Link asked.
"I, uh…" Gwait faltered as he attempted to think. "I was… expwowin'. Yeah."
"Explorin'?" Lura asked.
"Looks more like yeh go' los'," Dissal pointed out.
"Come on, let's get back to the group," Link told him.
"No, wait," Gwait said, picking up his lantern. "We can' go. Bwing yew wight hewe. I found somethin'."
At Gwait's beckoning, the trio followed him to the other side of the clearing. Pushing aside a pile of dead branches with a foot, he showed them a large, wooden disk which reminded Link of a barrel cover. But, unlike the wooden goods around the town, which used nails to keep themselves together, Link saw that this particular work, five slats of lumber cut into a vaguely circular shape, was held together with some kind of adhesive. He continued to watch with Dissal and Lura as Gwait set his sword on the ground and pulled up the closest edge of the disk. Underneath, darkness filled in a hole which was barely wide enough for an adult to pass through.
Dissal suddenly took in a sharp breath. Lura reached over to cling to Link's sleeve. Noting their reaction, Link glanced at the lid of the hole. On the underside, there was some sort of decoration, a seemingly mindless splash of yellow paint. Gwait nodded at them, his face particularly grave for someone so young.
"Yeh see wight. Buwbwins."
Link exhaled after taking a sharp breath as Dissal had done. He noticed his heart softly thudding against his chest, as if the revelation had coaxed it into existence. After another breath to calm himself, he said, "We have to tell the others."
"We can' weave it," Gwait pointed out. "We'w nevew find it again. I's too dawk."
"We can leave a lantern here," Dissal pointed out. "Gwait, can yeh ligh' yers?"
"Yeah," Gwait replied, dropping the lid. The lid landed with a soft thud.
Then it growled.
The four looked back down at it in confusion, wondering what had prompted that sound.
Then something jumped out of the hole, sending the lid flying into Gwait's face. Dissal, Lura, and Link leapt backwards in surprise as a squat figure recovered from its powerful vault. Their eyes fell upon a hunched figure with green skin partially hidden under a patchwork tunic of grey scrap. The creature's face was oblong and squeezed as close to its button nose as possible, dominated mostly by the large horns growing from the sides of its head. Its eyes glowed red in Dissal's lantern light, almost as bright as its yellow teeth as it slowly opened its wide maw in a gleeful smile.
Link snapped out of his shock and immediately yelled, "Run!"
But the Bulblin acted first. Unable to get a full swing in right away, it brought up one lanky arm as hard as it could and, with a large club of battered wood, caught Link in the back as he turned to run. Link hollered in agony as he collapsed to the ground, nearly falling on top of Dissal and Lura. His vision swam as a new source of pain aggravated his current condition. One hand clawed the dirt as he braced for another beating.
Instead, he heard Lura scream. Looking up, he found that the creature had stepped around Link's collapsed form. It held Lura by one arm while she frantically tried to beat off the hand with her little fist.
"Leave her alone!" Dissal's scream was met with an irritated grunt as the club clobbered the boy in the side of the head, sending him spilling across Link's legs in a motionless heap. Link felt around the ground for something, anything he could use as a weapon.
"YAAAAAH!" The shout came out of the darkness towards where the hole had been. Link felt the foot of another combatant brush his out-stretched arm, nearly crushing it. He jerked the arm away, getting a glimpse of Gwait as he swung the sword down on the Bulblin.
Still sheathed.
Using the wrong end.
With aim befitting a one-eyed man cursed by a lack of near-sighted focus.
The top of the sheath landed on the Bulblin's horn, prompting a confused grunt as it stared at the shimmering hilt hovering about the side of its head. It turned to look over its opposite shoulder, pulling some of the blade out. It released Lura and spun so as to put momentum into the club it aimed at Gwait's head. The spin ripped the sword from its sheath with a metallic slip, dropping into the grass near Link. Gwait, seeing the blow the Bulblin was about to deliver, ducked while taking a step back to avoid the hit. Lura immediately disappeared into the bushes.
Link's hand found the sword.
"Missed me!" Gwait taunted as he stepped backwards again to dodge the Bulblin's return swing. The swing brought the club's head down almost in contact with Link's skull, and Link slipped his legs out from under Dissal to roll away so he could avoid another wild strike. The Bulblin gave an angry growl as it swung again, stunning its own arm after the dodged attack rammed into a tree.
Link got to his feet.
"Miss—gyah!" Gwait cried out as a thorn bush snagged his retreating leg. Ripping his leg free cost him mobility as he flopped to the ground with a cry of pain.
The Bulblin towered over him, club raised high above its head as it readied what would surely be a killing blow. Gwait's face froze, suddenly contemplating his last moments without even an attempt to protect himself.
"HIYAAAAA!"
The Bulblin released a sudden scream of pain as a blade of metal sliced across its back. Its spin was clumsy when it turned to find a very dangerous Link, figure cast in shadow by the fallen lantern somewhere behind him, swing Gwait's misused sword back at it with a forward step that put more power into the blow. The second slice ripped through the Bulblin's tunic and spattered purple blood into the air as metal met flesh. The wound went deep, a clean cut from its left hip to its right shoulder. The force behind Link's strike knocked it backwards onto the same thorn bush that had nearly claimed Gwait's leg. Its eyes met the web of bare branches above for a moment.
Then the red glow in its eyes faded.
Link stood there for a moment, heart pounding against his ribs so much it hurt. But his body, energized as it was with some newfound will, bowed to his need to not be in so much pain. At first, he could not quite comprehend the scene that had just played out before him. The one who tore open the Bulblin's body… had that really been him? He, who could not even bring himself to smash a bug on his plate? Who had never even handled a weapon, much less a sword, before in his life? Who could never raise his voice or his hand in anger? It all felt so vague, like a dream one struggles to remember after mere moments of waking up. What happened to reality? Did it just… forget him for a moment?
As he looked on the dead aggressor, he swallowed back the urge to throw up. He had seen men's flesh burned by a snapped stay, crushed by a falling timber, and skewered by a miss-handled knife. No one ever came upon such brutality, such violence, on an airship. Up until now, he had always believed that, when a fight broke out, the conflict would resolve itself fast enough for the next round of drinks to hit the tables.
Death… Like this… By another using a weapon…
By him using a weapon…
His stomach churned, and he finally had to direct his eyes away. They fell upon the sword still in his hands, given a sinister sheen by lantern light. He watched droplets of blood fall from the sharp edge of the blade only to meld with the dark, withered grass at his feet. The sight disgusted him, and he bent a knee so that he could wipe the blood on the ground. Maybe with it, the feeling of revolt for himself.
And he met Gwait's eyes. For the longest time, they stared at each other, both revealing their fear to each other as if to eventually switch places. Link felt particularly horrified. Not only had he killed another living being, but he had done it before a child younger than him. What did that say about Link? That he was a killer? That making him mad was a sure way to commit suicide? He expected Gwait to start spitting out every vicious thing that a child could say to someone that had just scared them senseless. Link expected anger. Fear. Revulsion. Please, Gwait, don't leave me in suspense, he thought at the younger boy.
What am I?
"… h-hewo." The word came out complicated by Gwait's usual speech, and Link could not be sure what it meant. He must have stopped breathing at some point because the word felt like it drew Link's breath out, forcing him to inhale. What was Gwait trying to tell him?
Gwait swallowed. He stood back up with his weight mostly on his uninjured leg, giving the Bulblin corpse next to him enough of a passing glance to convince him to step away. Where he moved surprised Link; he took up the space beside Link, close to the sword in Link's left hand. Standing eye-to-eye with the older stranger, he had only this to say.
"Yeh saved me."
The full impact of Gwait's lone word finally hit him. To be thought of such… Even as he found his own actions deplorable enough that he wished he had never taken them.
Somehow, from there, everything just started pulling itself together in his mind. And he realized something so vital to his life that he could not believe his own stupidity at not seeing it before. It was the reason Meilont went to fight. And until he fell from the sky, it was the reason he had chased after the Horizon's Eye. As he rose to full height (short though he may be), he felt his spirit gather from out of nowhere as the pure impulse to protect all he had in his life finally reached his heart.
"Link!" Lura's call snapped him out of his contemplation, and he spun around until he saw more lantern light wandering through the trees. She stepped out first, looked about the clearing, and scrambled over to Dissal's twitching body. "Doctor Beld, hurry! Dissal's hur'!"
"Ah'm comin'!" Beld hollered back as he stomped into the clearing flanked by two able-looking men, one of them the lean man wielding the blacksmith's hammer. Beld stepped over to Dissal as Lura helped him sit upright. After a quick examination, he dug into his bag while surveying the scene. "Wha' the 'ell 'appened 'ere?" he demanded from Link.
"It was amazin'!" Gwait declared as he hobbled over to Beld. "Fiwst, the Buwbwin jumped out o' the howe, an' he hit ma face with the wid. Then he hit the taw boy, an' he few. Then he gwabbed Wuwa, so I hit him with ma swowd. Then-then…" Gwait's voice started to give to hyperventilation under his excitement.
"Easeh," Beld demanded, holding up a hand to stop him. "Wheah's the 'ole?"
How could he be so weak?
"Over there," Lura pointed.
The two other men stepped through the crowd and examined the hole. "This is incredible," the hammer-wielder commented in an exhausted tone. "I' prob'ly goes back as far as the fron' o' the village. When di' they pu' this t'gether, do yeh s'pose?"
"If i's deep 'nough, could'a been years ago, an' we wouldna noticed," the other man answered. "We gotta close i' off an' star' searchin' fer more."
The hammer-wielder looked around until he saw Gwait's discarded lantern on the ground. "Does tha' ligh' have oil in it?"
"Y-yeah," Gwait replied.
"Tha'll do then." The hammer-wielder, setting down his own lantern, stepped over to pick up Gwait's. He pulled some kind of device Link could not quite see and struck the lantern into light. "We c'n se' fire in this one here an' seal it. The smoke'll have ta come out o' the others if there are any."
How could he be such a coward?
"We'll have the others with us fan out ta find the res'," the other man agreed, pulling out what looked like a water pouch.
"The lid's over here," Lura said, scampering past them to retrieve the hole's covering.
"Good," the hammer-wielder said. "We'll wedge i' in on 'em." He raised the hand holding Gwait's lantern as he approached the hole. It was a miracle that his swing did not put out the light as he threw it into the hole. Following the crash of glass, the other man began dumping the contents of his water pouch into the hole. Light emitted from the hole after a few moments, and they forced the lid into the hole. They each jumped on the lid to make sure it was fixed in place.
Link watched the whole scene with his mind somewhere else. He could not believe his lack of energy for the past few days. Even a punk like Gwait had brought him down to a level of pathetic that he just could not comprehend. It had taken putting his new friends in danger to make him see that, even without the Island Sonata, he still had a force of will that would not allow anyone else to come to harm.
"Link!" Beld snapped for the third time. Calm and collected, Link's eyes fell upon the doctor. For a moment, Beld looked a little surprised. This did not look like the same boy Talein had brought home. Frowning, he asked, "Yeah no' 'urt, ah yeh?"
Link's reply was a silent shake of the head, barely noticeable even as Beld looked directly at him. Glancing about, he spotted the sword's sheath behind Beld and slowly walked over to retrieve it. Beld's eyes followed; Link could sense them pressing against his back. He picked up the sword, sheathed it, and glanced back at the group.
"Gwait, I going to borrow this," he said more to the group than to just Gwait.
For a moment, confused glances passed between the people who knew Link. "Wha's in tha' 'ead o' yeh's, boe?" Beld asked.
"Yeah," Gwait replied. "Wha' do yeh pwan ta do? Yeh can' jus' take ma swowd."
Link tucked the sword under the belt holding up his trousers. "It wasn't a request," he told Gwait with a stern tone.
"Don' yeh boss me awound again!" Gwait shouted at him, stamping down one foot. Unfortunately, it was his injured foot, and he collapsed to his knees from the pain.
"Now jus' wai' a damn minute," Beld began as he stood up.
Link gave his head a violent shake. "I can't wait anymore." He spun until he faced the light of the distant town under siege. Without so much as a glance back, he charged into the darkness. Where he got the energy from, he did not want nor need to think about.
He had a job to do.
He had a calling to take up.
He had a title to live up to.
Because Gwait had called him a "hero".