†
From the nooks and crannies of their hiding places, the Old One, Avon, the Fat Wife, and the orphans peeked and waited to see what their fate may be.
Duval’s scouts were approaching the orphanage. As the five mercenaries rode down the hill, they saw next to no movement from the small settlement below. It was early, with the sun barely up, and the air was very still. Hardly disturbed by even a breeze, smoke ran straight up from the chimney of the small cottage below.
They approached slowly, with caution. If Ravan was here, he would not be caught by surprise. This they knew because he'd been one of them. However, he had not just been one of them, he’d been better than them. And now he’d deserted them. He was the enemy, and they feared this.
Scanning the rough outbuildings, they spied the small lean-to barn occupied by a single cow. There was a pigsty and an aged horse that hardly seemed fit to work. A few sheep dotted the pasture behind the house. Nowhere was the magnificent, black war-horse.
The five of them were no match for Ravan; all of them knew this. Their hopes were to find him, if he were here, and quickly retreat to report back to Duval. They could then return with an army. They swept the forest’s edge looking for the horse. The stallion would not likely divulge their presence; Ravan had taught the horse to be silent when others approached.
It wasn’t until they were much closer, near the flat of the grounds, that they saw the tree, the one which held the markings of the giant. They hesitated, as though uncertain what to do, and seemed to quarrel softly amongst themselves. Each one of them pointed in turn and nodded toward the marks on the tree.
The children watched the soldiers, knew what the mark meant, that it was “magic” and would protect them. They'd stood on each another’s shoulders to rub their fingers across the deep cuts and recounted with amazement the one who'd marked the tree in such a way.
“If they come closer, we stand no chance,” Avon worried in whispers.
“They won’t; Ravan and the giant promised,” the Old One replied assuredly. “We must trust them.”
“How can you be so sure?” Avon was unconvinced.
“Of little else do I believe more than in the conviction of that child.” He spoke of Ravan as though he were still a boy. He tried to explain. “No ordinary man chooses death willingly. These men now face that notion. If they are ordinary, they will leave. If extraordinary, however, they will stay.” He smiled at his granddaughter. “An extraordinary man is truly rare, my dear.”
As though they'd heard the Old One’s words, the five men turned, making their way slowly back from where they’d come. They disappeared over the knoll just as the sun peeked over the ridge. Their report would be that Ravan was not there, and that no one remained at the orphanage—never mind the smoke curling from the chimney.
The small and fragile reality that was daily life at the orphanage would stumble quietly along, noticed by few, and never again to have one taken from them.
* * *
The five next visited the Inn, and it was a disturbing stop. The one-handed barkeep and only a few patrons were reluctant to speak of the devil who’d visited them, as though he might return at any moment. Eventually, in whispers, they recounted the dark and terrible events which had befallen Pierre Steele that night not so long ago. They would tell of how the monster had spent only moments there before vanishing, casting horror and fear over the entire village. Men no longer slept at the Inn for the savagery they'd witnessed, and business had been very poor since the horrifying event.
“He took grain from the stables, some meat and turnips from the smoke-shed, then disappeared out behind, into the trees.” The Innkeeper waved his only good hand toward the back of the Inn, cradling his bandage wrapped stump close to his chest.
He spoke with his voice trembling and without looking up. Then he started, once more, to rub the mark on the bar with a rag. As though obsessed, he remained on the mark for a long while, rubbing—rubbing. There was an age on the Innkeeper now, a look the mercenaries had seen before. It was the look an enemy had after meeting Ravan and surviving to tell of it.
The five took to the back of the Inn. Looking up at the small dormer window two roof ledges up, they remembered the small footsteps which had marked the snow the night they'd taken after the boy. Several of these five men had been part of the chase that fateful eve and had seen what the boy had been capable of, even at that tender age.
Tonight, they saw the prints of the stallion, disappearing into the trees at exactly the same spot where the boy disappeared years ago. This was what they told Duval. That Ravan had gone back…to the cliffs.
* * *
The stallion walked slower, calmer, as though it sensed the same finality as did its riders. On through the dense, shadowy forest of pine, along the creek, deeper and deeper into the woods they went. It was almost noon, but the sun barely penetrated the density of the boughs overhead.
The woodland floor was familiar to the man who sat the horse, and he chose his path easily from memory. Now, however, the child’s footsteps were long ago erased, replaced by the heavy and sure steps of the war-horse.
It was peculiar to ride in this place, to recall when he’d walked here before. It seemed so long ago…so hard to think of the boy as himself. He remembered how he used to groom the horses that came to the Inn. He’d thought about how one fine day he might be so privileged as to ride a horse of his very own into these woods—how wonderful he’d thought that might be.
He reached down to pat the stallion on the neck. It had been loyal to him and true to all he asked of it. He’d recently pressed the horse very hard, and it performed magnificently, without protest. One dream had come true—he owned a very fine horse to ride in this very familiar forest.
“There’s a good fellow; we are almost done,” he murmured to the animal. Its ears flitted back and forth in response to its master’s voice.
Ravan closed his eyes at intervals, remembering that fateful night. How his lungs had hurt, how his body ached, the burn of the cold in the stream, and…of when he fell. They passed a very old snare, one set by much smaller hands. It had sprung a long time ago; the one that lamed the soldier. He paused, thinking briefly about the man, how Duval had simply tossed him aside as disposable.
Everything finally seemed so clear. Ravan was on the right path, but this time he did nothing to hide his trail. The woods spoke to him of that cold, dark night when, as a boy, he'd given them the run of their lives. The breeze blew soft and chilly as it invited his memories. The tree boughs waved gently to him as though to say, Here we are, just as before. We remember you.
He looked back on it strangely as though he'd not been that boy. He thought, in a sad way, how unfortunate it was for that child to fight so hard, to lose so much. Where was God? Why did that boy have to sacrifice?
Just as quickly he answered himself. God’s hand had not been with him here. Divinity had simply watched. It was the fate of humanity that had played itself out that night. Nicolette was right—fate had been unkind to toss a child about so, but fate did not care.
How long will it be before Duval and his men find us? he wondered. This time, he would give them chase again. It would not be a run of their lives; it would be a run to their deaths. He was strangely at peace with this and sighed deeply, comforted, breathing in the familiarity of the woods to the depths of his soul. It whispered back to him, sincere and melancholy, full of poignant memory.
Nicolette leaned her head against his back and squeezed her arms more tightly around him. He turned and saw her looking up at him with that eternally curious and baffling mystery that was Nicolette. She questioned nothing, accepted nothing, and was so sure of her space in the present. He was immensely gratified to have her with him.
“You never ask me where we are going,” he offered.
She held his gaze, kindly but firmly. “I know where we are going,” she spoke softly, resolutely, and reached to rest her pale hand, so frail, upon his arm.
He nodded, strangely comforted by her certainty. “You never asked me what happened at the Inn,” he pressed.
“I know what happened at the Inn.”
He thought about this for a moment, believing her but not sure why. “How can you know what happened at the Inn?” he asked softly, curious, but quite sure that she really did know.
“Because when you came from it, something was gone from you, something you have been meaning to cast off.” She offered no more, seemed content with her explanation as though he should also be.
“I killed him, you know.”
“I know, but why is it significant that you tell this to me now?” There was little hesitation from her. “You have killed many, have you not?” She asked this as though she knew the answer.
“I have, but this one was…” he hesitated, struggling to finish the thought.
“Paramount?” she finished for him.
“Yes—yes it was,” he said, gesturing with his hand out as though to someone out there in the wildness of the woods, “to a boy.”
She sat quietly, as though satisfied that he had processed the murder reasonably. “And the boy?” she asked softly.
Ravan thought for a very long time. “The boy was ill but is better these days. I think he will be well soon.”
“Then, you have done a good thing.” She leaned her head against his back again.
He thought about this for another spell before asking, “Nicolette?”
“Yes?”
He breathed in the crisp, earthen and mossy forest air and sighed deeply. “Thank you.”
Her silence was all the confirmation he needed. She accepted him, knew his heart, the light and the dark of it, and passed no judgment upon him.
It was late in the evening when they reached the cliffs. Ravan slid from the horse and helped Nicolette down. He loosed the girth so that the horse might rest a bit and glanced up only to see her standing at the edge of a very steep precipice, looking down.
She seemed to float out over nothing, and it startled him. He thought for an instance she might fall. Dropping the reins, he hurried to where she stood. She seemed to step back onto solid ground and continued to stare. Her expression was…sad.
It wasn’t until he was standing by her that he realized where she was looking. It was a very long ways down, almost vertical, very sharp and treacherous. There were jagged scrub trees and sharp rocks along a drop of nearly a hundred paces. He took a bitter breath in. To his dismay, it was the very spot where he'd fallen so long ago. Ravan hadn’t believed that he might have recognized the spot—thought he would certainly have forgotten it, but this was not the case.
So long ago, when he stepped from this ledge, he'd been beaten and broken at the end of a long and terrible night. As a boy, on that fearful night, he believed he would step to his death. Now, he found it hard to believe that he had not. Standing on the cliff’s edge, gazing down with her, he knew without a doubt that this was the spot. He was unable to take his eyes from the vast, perilous emptiness which fell away in front of him.
“How did you know?” he asked.
She continued to stare off and down into the terrible face of what had happened here. Just when he thought she hadn’t heard him, she gazed up, dark eyes burning into him, and reached a pale hand up to touch his cheek.
He took her hand in his and held it tightly—asked again, “How did you know?”
“It speaks of you. It endures the memory of your fall,” she said solemnly as though she suddenly recognized that time was short, and Ravan would face difficult decisions very soon. “It is a tragic spot—this is a good place for what is to come,” she murmured, looking back down at the nothingness beyond the abyss.
Ravan swallowed again, thickly, as he gazed back down the cliff edge and across the ravine. The wind whistled, and he agreed. “Yes, you are right. It is a good place for what is to come.”
They walked for a long time, leading the stallion down the ravine, switching back and forth across the terrain until they were finally at the bottom. The river was shallow and wide, but the footing was solid. They drank deeply then splashed across the river and started slowly up the other side. It was late afternoon before they stopped.
Dusk was no longer young when Ravan started the fire and spitted the pair of grouse he'd taken earlier on their ride. Nicolette sat quietly, the ground hard and cold. She perched upon her cloak and pulled it up closely around her shoulders; Ravan felt her eyes upon him as he bent at his task.
Stoking the fire, he pushed the coals beneath the grouse and prodded the burning logs toward Nicolette to better warm her. His sword and bow lay nearby and, despite his preoccupation, he carried a weight on his shoulders.
She tilted her head curiously to the side, like a fragile bird, and asked, “We wait for them here?”
Satisfied with the blaze of the fire, he came to sit next to her and put his arms around her. It was wondrous to be able to do this simple act, to hold someone, and his heart lightened. “Yes, we wait for them here.”
The sun had been down for a bit, and they watched the purple and pink clouds of dusk give way to the velvet, black blanket of night. They had the cliffs to their back, steep and unyielding, with a ledge very far above. They were safe…for the moment.
The only way to approach them was from the west, and this was an advantage to Ravan. He could see a long way down. Not only did he have the benefit of superior elevation, he had the good fortune of distance. An enemy would be visible from very far away, and he had many arrows with which to reach them. In the morning, he would temper more in anticipation of the battle to come. His strategy was sound, and all that was left was to wait.
The grouse hissed and browned to a honey gold on the spit. Ravan remained close to Nicolette, enjoying the comfort of her beside him. She rested a hand on his knee, and it felt warm through his trousers. He'd thought of a moment like this before. There had been times when he’d wondered what it might be like to have someone sit next to him every day, someone who knew him and accepted him, a partner to grow old with. He wondered what it might have been like if things had been different.
Briefly, his memories took him back to the time when the Fat Wife had cut his hair in the warmth of a kitchen, a very long time ago. Memories like these seemed seldom, and he collected them like the treasures that adorned the personal spaces of the children at the orphanage—precious and irreplaceable.
There was no need to state the obvious, that Ravan was terribly outmatched. He stood no chance against Duval and his men or even Adorno’s army for that matter. He was grateful Nicolette didn’t waste her time with thoughts such as these. Instead, she peered into the eyes of her lover with a mystical curiosity and asked, “How old were you when you were last here?”
He was immediately enraptured by her inquisitiveness, again overwhelmed with her effortless fascination with the world about her. Resting his hand gently on hers, he reached to pull her closer to him, to smell her hair, to feel her lean against his chest.
Studying the fire, as humans are compelled to do, he let his mind wander before answering. “I was fourteen the last time I was here, but that was on foot, and it seems like such a long time ago.” He glanced toward the horse, tied and content to work its way through the dried grass thrown before it. “I did not have such a fine horse back then—did not have a horse at all—but I am no stranger to this land.”
“Hmm,” she murmured. “It must be reassuring…to have the familiarity of such a place.”
It occurred to him that Nicolette could stand within the devil’s pyre, and if fancy struck her, she would be untroubled and ask of him what she would.
The grouse would wait. Ravan laid Nicolette down, and they made love by the fire. It was at that moment that something new stirred within his heart. It was as simple and perfect as anything could be. It transcended the desperation of today and cast him far away, into his past. He was, once again, a child, wild and free in the woods behind the orphanage. Only this time, another child ran beside him…and he loved her.