Chapter Six
Whispering Leaves
Three Months Later
The ground of this marshy wetland depressed beneath every footfall I made upon it. There were but a few trees here and there that had managed to survive within the bog as everything else was choked out by the massive grasses that grew up over my head by the span of another man’s height still.
It was dark, but even as no sky ocean fell upon this distant corner of the savanna the grasses still glowed dimly enough by which to see by. Mists rose heavily all about me and I found myself despairing of the purpose that had driven me to come to this foreboding haunt that not even the dark ones cared to linger in, as it was simply just too unpredictable.
These marshlands laying off to the one side of the inland savanna were a no man’s land between the forest and the grass where only the bravest of creatures dared to roam. The marshes could open up and swallow one whole in the blink of an eye or worse yet, catch explosively onto fire as gasses, formed from rotting vegetation, erupted.
The swamplands could burn down in a day and yet, with the passage of a few days the new grass would already have risen several feet into the air once more obscuring what lay within its damp enclosure. Rumor had it that what lay reclused within these marshes was worth the risk I took to come here.
That said my hope was dimming even as I contemplated on the unlikely reality of being able to find my way out of here. My hand reached out and I felt at a broken read of grass. It was a fresh break.
In the dim light I looked down and the soggy ground gave evidence to the fact that something large and heavy had come this way. I knelt down and felt the ground. With eagerness my fingers traced the outline within the sticky mud that the creature’s hoof had made.
Rising I headed to the right as this was the way the tracks led. I moved as swiftly as I could as I had no wish to be found in this marsh by days first light. The insects were truly a force to be dealt with let alone how unbearable the heat of day would make the smell brought on by the decay of everything once living now left to rot within the stagnant ponds of water situated all about.
The muddy track I followed suddenly rose unexpectedly to higher ground. Before long I was on a path. No one, including the oldest of the treebeasts, had mentioned anything about there being paths within this place of pressed on despondency.
I made much faster time as I ran along the path that now bore the tracks of several beasts and not just the one that I had followed to this hidden corridor through the grasses. Inwardly I rejoiced as the evidence of more and more traffic within this realm of tall reeds and standing water became evidenced.
Suddenly, my journey here was a success, even if I came away empty handed. The legendary Horses of Zavorra had managed to find a way to survive.
They were no ordinary horses. Indeed they were the first horses from which all other horses had been sired that populated the length and breadth of the seven lands. Unlike their offspring though, they had not lost their ability to speak in an understandable tongue, at least that was the rumor. Time would tell hopefully soon enough whether that still was the case.
Perhaps of all the obstacles presented in the taking back of the forest the most formidable one remained firmly stationed within savannas of this end of the forest where the sky oceans did not fall upon. Once they had, but through sorcery and a twisting of the air the oceans of the sky, no longer came this far out into the grasslands.
Few creatures dared to come out into the heart of the savanna, as out here there was no cover from the foe who had made it their home to the exclusivity of all others. A foe that ran as fast as the fleetest of my father’s horses and yet possessed all the cunning of a man.
Truly, two had become melded into one in an act of sheer depravity beyond the morals of all that should ever be. The Centaurs of Argantheum, hybrid constructs of both horse and man, where the most formidable foe that remained within the forest that with an awakening zeal was casting off the vestiges of time and claiming back all the goodness of the ways that had once been.
Fallen men and the twisted creations of the fallen angels alike were fleeing the forest left and right, as suddenly the forest was becoming a more unsure reality for them than they had made it for all high order peaceable dwelling animals. The renewal of this seventh land, greater in honor I now felt than all the others, was held in check by this one final holdout of evil that existed within the very heart of the forest.
I would not rest until it too was stamped out. That was why I was here.
I slowed my pace as I felt the presence of something other than myself within the cloistered vestiges of this grassed over jungle of reads and rotting vegetation. I had brought no weapon with me for if the rumors were true it would have served me no good and above all I did not wish to offend the magnificent creatures that lingered on here in this marshy place of lost dreams.
The centaurs, it was rumored, feared the crushing hooves of the Zavorrans more than anything else, as the centaurs in the eyes of the first horses were the worst of all possible abominations. It had been from their own stock that the centaurs had first been created from.
In the desire to crush all of the purity of the original orders a long time ago the Horses of Zavorra were deceived by several of the fallen angelic host. Imprisoned, against their will, the mares had been bred with the seed of man and through great sorcery the seed had taken hold and its offspring had been the centaurs.
Worst of all, those same mares had been cajoled by their new masters to continue in service to them and it was in those days that all the captured herds of the Horses of Zavorra had lost their voices and become as seemingly unmindful of comprehension as many of the domesticated animals of the seven lands were today.
Upon having a great degree of their specialness endowed upon them by their Creator stolen from them, they had been herded from their inner forest paradise to serve the needs of men the world wide in both industry and war. The centaurs however had remained.
They were an elite force within the armies of darkness as they had sprung forth from one of the highest honored creations of all and mankind itself. It was heavily rumored that those Horses of Zavorra that remained hated the centaurs with a consuming vengeance that drove them mad with the lust to kill them.
It was for this reason that the centaurs hunted the horses from which their own origin had come from down through the many years until the point of extinction had been reached many years ago. No horse of the first-order of horses that had not allowed themselves to be polluted by the actions of fallen men or the cajoling promises of devils in disguise was safe upon the savanna.
The centaurs set traps for them and as the centaurs were truly cunning opponents, many of the surviving herds had vanished over the years until it was rumored that only one bunch remained. This intermediary land of marsh and bog was the last holdout of the Horses of Zavorra and with a silent hush to the night I stepped out into a stamped down spot that was quite sturdy and not marshy at all.
All around me the tall grasses of the marsh rose up sharply to between 10 and 14 feet high. Their cast-off glow only illuminated the scene dimly, while heavy mists enshrouded everything else.
I walked steadily forward into the space until a voice directly from behind me rumbled out deeply, “Tell me, man, why have you come here, to my domain?”
Gripped tensely by the stress of being both surprised and the self-acknowledgment of the deep peril that I was in, I turned slowly around and let my eyes take in the most resplendently proportioned stallion that I had ever laid eyes on. He regarded me from a distance of not twenty five feet away across the clearing with a tossed mane of vengeful credence that said my time was short.
Spreading my hands out from my unarmored sides I said as I kept my head lowered deferentially in respect to this legend of a creature, “I am unarmed. I mean you no harm.”
The stallion raged out savagely, “Man needs no weapons, save words alone!”
With one awful bound forward he surged directly toward me and I closed my eyes. There was nowhere to run to or any way possible of defending myself from this creature, even if I’d had a sword for truly the passion of this stallion was such that he would have impaled himself upon my blade in order to simply crush the life out of me.
The crushing impact of the stallion into me never happened as with a dance of cat like grace he spun away from me leaving only the impact of churned up sod clumps to ping off of me. Slowly I opened my eyes to behold the massive stallion pacing in a circle around me.
He spoke, “So, a man with courage or perhaps at least one with a higher ideal than simply feeding himself and breeding. A rarity these days to be sure. I’ll humor you a little while longer. Why are you here?”
He stopped to regard me solemnly with a look of wisdom going forth from his eyes that bespoke more in volume than I had seen in the eyes of most men and I said, “You know why.”
He tossed his head impatiently and I continued with, “What man in his right mind would venture into a place like this in the dark of the night if I was not in desperate need of something. You have ears and I know that you must have noticed the changes taking place in the forest as of late.”
He looked away and said, “Truly the leaves have ears and a willingness to gossip, Tarik. What you do is noble, but you have nothing you can offer me. Still it has been encouraging to see that courage and truthfulness of character are yet to be found in the hearts of man, though you be fewer in number than my own kind. Go now, as it is as I feared that you have come here with nothing to offer other than the promise of a centaur’s spear through the flank. I am not ready yet to be so foolish as to hope that there is any future in having hope that things will ever get better.”
With a bounding leap he was gone and for several solemn moments that stretched on into minutes seemingly without end I stood there as the sounds of the stallion’s passage through the marsh grew dimmer and dimmer to the ear. I had not expected this.
Somehow I had expected to come away with more. We had little enough chance as it was against the centaurs in their grassland habitat and now without the option of fielding our own cavalry we had no hope at all!
I looked heavenward as my despair in the moment took full hold of me and seemed to blind me to the reality of how much of the seemingly impossible that had already occurred. Blinking I clung to the scattered testaments of faith hard won over the past three months and reaffirmed them within my soul as a source of strength to go on in belief with.
“Not by might, but by the Spirit of Eloah will the fight be won.” I nodded in affirmation of that stated truth and pressed forward in the direction that I hoped would take me clear of the marshes.
We would just have to do without the horses as hard as that was to contemplate doing. If it was Eloah’s will for us to succeed we would and if not then we would make a tasty stew for days to come in the cook pots of our enemies.
*******
It was midday by the time I managed to wearily pull free of the marshes and gain the firmer ground of the savanna. I would have to move stealthily from here on as the centaurs kept a steady patrol of this quadrant of the savanna and unarmed as I was I would be a meal for them before I knew it.
All that in mind, I jumped completely startled, as I rounded an out flung clump of tall marsh grass invading into the savanna to behold the black beast of my late-night encounter of the night before. He stood gazing out at the dry open grasslands before us with a wistfulness that was truly heart rending to behold.
I turned my gaze from him to look at the grass stretching out before us and tried to imagine how awful it must be to be a horse destined to rule such a plain of grass and yet be permanently cooped up within a stinking mush pit of insecticidal horror as what lay behind us. I shook my head at the imagery of what torture that must be, especially for the Horses of Zavorra as it was rumored that they were extremely long-lived.
“You do well to empathize with my situation. Empathy is an often overlooked quality in a leader. It gets thrown out too much as seemingly a thing of weakness, but in reality all the best generals have always had it, as how else do you get into the mind of your opponent, but by imagining exactly how he is viewing the situation.”
The way he spoke in terms of reflective quality bespoke of experience in the matter. Just how old was he?
He looked me directly in the eye and said, “My age matters not, all that matters is that the rage of injusticeness still lies like fire in my heart as from the time of being a young colt I witnessed my mother run through by a centaur’s lance, only to add to that all that I have seen since then. My words of last night were for the leaves of the swamp trees to hear as no doubt they have told there story to others since then, but there are no leaves to listen here Tarik so now you see the value of playing the mind of your opponent, correct?”
Speaking softly I said, “I see the wisdom that has preserved the members of your kind up till now and I am humbled because I have much to learn.”
“Ahh, but at least you’re willing to learn. That Tarik, is half the battle in and of itself. Now mark my words young warrior of the Most High, that if there is to be a battle upon these plains then surely we will take part in it, as yet fire remains within us to strive against all that has corrupted what once was our domain that we ruled over with majesty gifted to us from on high. As to any more detail I will not say as it is best for the plans of any battle to be few and simple and above all talked about as little as possible, but know that we will be there to take part in it.”
I stared into the stallion’s eyes and for a moment there was stillness and then he shifted away to head once more for the marshes that afforded them cover from their nemesis of the day. I did not like the independence the stallion insisted on having, but it was beyond my power to make him do anything so I stayed silent and left all my questions unasked as I took comfort in the fact that the odds were now a lot more in our favor, but then who was taking odds to begin with. In the grand scheme of things I knew that luck had nothing to do with our successes within the forest these past few months.
The other children who had been changed into young adults had come around and had found some courage to take part in the endeavor my original group of seven had started, but they had less merit than the seven who had leaped into the flames of destiny as it were right alongside of me at the first battle and thus I had positioned each of the seven as vanguards over the group of the late bloomers until each governed over approximately 50 fighters each. It was a small army indeed, but we were winning with the help of our forest allies and the grace of Eloah.
Indeed, Eloah went before us in opposition to all those who were not of His creation and those given over to the ways of darkness. Steadily I was learning that numbers didn’t win the day, but rather a combination of rightness of purpose and the strength of the Spirit of the Most High.
All that said, grave doubts arose within me when it came to the centaurs and I hated myself for the lack of faith that evidenced within me where they were concerned. I had seen their maneuvers as they wheeled around in perfect formation out upon the grass as they tempted us to leave the shelter of the forest and come out and face them.
Their prowess with weaponry was immense as were their beastly abilities of speed and size. They were smaller than the Horses of Zavorra, but in number they added up into the thousands. The coming battle with them needed to be fought in the mind surely before any engagement of land and steel was begun.
If I were a centaur and knew my numbers were far greater than my opponent how then would I act on the field of battle?
As I walked my mind fought over all the possibilities and with a whispered prayer for guidance I began to do what the centaurs had done to the horses for years on end, in short I began to form the basis for a plan to trap the centaurs, but surely they would not fall for it and yet arrogance has a mind of its own. All that remained was how one might massage the aspect of their arrogance to be the only thing the centaurs acted out of in retaliation with.
Indeed the only weakness my enemies of the moment possessed that I could lay firm claim to was arrogance. Arrogance within their superior numbers and trained prowess in battle. Surely, if there was any undoing of their stranglehold upon the savanna it must lie there and to that end I planned accordingly, but many questions remained.
It was getting on toward dark before I reached the border of the forest where our forces lay encamped. The treebeasts loyal to us were here in this spot in greater number than in other areas of the forest and so the dark of night posed less of a threat to us.
That aside we had plenty of sentries. Idly I let my gaze drift upward to a lofty branch where Rafargan lounged indulgently upon. His big yellow eyes glowed down at me and his ears perked up as he rumbled out softly, “I trust that you met with success?”
Schooling my voice as to not reveal too much I said, “Well, I found them, if that’s what you mean. Getting them to do anything though would be more akin to attempting to keep the leaves from whispering.”
Rafargan chuckled, he said nothing else and in a way I knew that he had seen through my purposed crypticness. Looking around at the leaves of supposed friendly trees gathered all around I wondered as to how many of our private conversations were being broadcast about whether through maliciousness or just plain gossip. It was a sobering thought to consider to be sure.
Honley suddenly appeared from beside a large oak trunk. He was one of my group of seven and of them all he was the strongest save for me. Most importantly though he was ever reliable and had been of great help to me in seeing to the structuring of the army that we were amassing.
“How goes the war?” I said, knowing already that there had been no skirmishes today.
“The same.” He commented. I patted him on the back and went to move on, but paused as he asked, “Will they help?”
Glancing to him I gave him a direct look that said otherwise from my comment of, “Hard to say yet.”
He nodded perceptively and glanced at the trees surrounding us. He apparently had been wondering the same about their trustworthiness.
“Tell me, Honley, when you were a boy did you ever help your mother weave the dry grass mats for the floor coverings?”
“All the time. So have most of the others, why?”
“Well, I want you and all the others to start weaving ones just like them except for one thing. Idly I pulled my one sword from its scabbard and sliced off the stem of a dead twig.
Leaning down I picked up the twig that was the thickness of my thumb and then some and began fastening a sharp point to the one end of it. Sharp point completed I now had a stick of about 10 inches in length. Holding it out to Honley I said, “Harden it in the fire and then include it in the mat like so.” I said as I positioned the stick with the pointed end facing upward to the sky.
Honley blinked and then said to my continuing chagrin, “Yes, my Lord. We’ll all get busy right away making them. Where did you ever come up with such an idea?”
“Something my father once made mention of. Honley you seriously need to stop referring to me as a lord. I came from the same village that you did and I make no claim to royalty.”
Honley’s brow smoothed out as he smiled and said, “And what else would be befitting of our leader. Truly you are a lord among men. While none of us has any claim to being of royal blood, you of all of us have been appointed to the position of leader by the Most High, no less, and so it seems to me that respect deems me in turn to be respectful of you for the significance that the Most High has placed in you and so I will continue to do so respectfully, Sir.”
I sighed and began to move on. Sudden hunger assaulted me and I started to make mention of asking if any dinner remained when Honley preempted me by saying, “She has it ready for you. Just over that way.”
Not meeting his gaze I nodded and continued on in the direction that he had pointed. No explanation was needed as to who the, she, in question was. Only Jafina took it upon herself to do the extra work of not only seeing to her own needs, but often to my own as well. I appreciated her greatly for it as I had the tendency to forget what I needed in favor of accomplishing more in the larger picture of things and yet I felt guilty of the extra effort she put out on behalf of me.
I stepped into the welcoming blaze of the small fire and set down beside it. I reached out and picked up the thoughtfully prepared meal set near enough to the fire as to stay warm, but not get too hot as to burn.
I took a bite of the food and with appreciation glanced over to where Jafina lay back against a tree trunk asleep. As if on cue her green hued eyes opened to stare at me enigmatically.
Of all my fellow warriors she was the most lethal. In a way I doubted if she had ever even been asleep. She was always seemingly ready and as for an ally and confidant I could ask for no better.
More than that, I could not wish for any deeper relationship with her in the here and now and thankfully she did not require it of me, but instead she remained open and ever helpful as if she lived to be of service to me. She asked no questions as to how the meeting with the horses had gone, instead she let me eat and I felt myself relaxing more and more by the moment.
The prepared bed of blankets suddenly looked very good, but I forced myself to finish the food, which really wasn’t all that hard to do. Jafina spoke, “When do we fight the horse devils?”
Horse devils was the common name for centaurs, especially by women as the lusts of the centaurs were well known from the fables that we had all been taught of as children. Centaurs sought to copulate with anything they could get their hands on, but human women especially.
Such an act of bestiality often resulted in the death of the woman in the worst way possible. Long had the legends been told of the fabled horsemen as mythical bogeyman that carried away girls that didn’t behave. None of those stories had ever been really all that seriously taken, until we had come here to this forest only to learn that such creatures still existed.
I glanced her way and said, “They have reputedly over 5000 of their kind fit for battle and we have but a mixed force of man and beast numbering something short of 500.”
Her eyebrow rose, “Since when have numbers mattered, my Lord?”
There was that title again. To answer her question though it hadn’t been a thing of concern up till now. From a realistic view the disparity in numbers should matter, but acts of faith were ever, if rarely, won by greater numbers.
Case in point I certainly hadn’t had numbers in my favor the day that I had jumped into the pit with but seven others and some large cats to help me in a battle that any would have deemed impossible to step away victorious from. Walking on that same faith I nodded and glanced over at Jafina and asked, “How about we take them on tomorrow.”
Smiling she nodded and said, “The sooner their destruction comes the better, I’m thinking.”
“Your faith truly outshines my own Jafina.”
She shook her head no and abruptly rose up from the fire. Not being able to avoid it, my gaze as if drawn from a primal urge from within, took in how beautifully filled out she was in all the ways that would drive a man to desire her as his bride.
It was not only her great beauty that bore attractiveness, but it was also the confident way that she had about her that made everything she possessed physically only seem more amplified. As beautifully feminine as she was she lacked nothing in agility or stamina.
I was her leader and her attention to me as such was humbling but even more so, the fact that she wanted me as something more than simply that and it was both a daily surprise to me even as it was a torment and willing myself not to give in to the desire to dream about all that there could be with her I glanced away from her and said, “They have but one weakness and it is this that I wish to exploit above all others.”
“I have heard of their arrogance even as I have witnessed it with my eyes.” Jafina said softly and I nodded in concurrence before saying, “In order for us to be successful we need them to over commit themselves and do something rash.”
“I do believe you have left out one other weakness that they possess Tarik that may well lead into taking advantage of their primary weakness.”
Feeling drawn in by her I turned my gaze away from the fire and back to her only to witness that the sight of her was the greater of the two blazes within my vision. Softly I asked, “Which is what?”
“Their lust, especially for a woman such as I. You need them angry in order for them to act impulsively upon the field of battle, yes?”
Speaking slowly I said, “Yes, that would be very helpful.”
She nodded and then said, “Leave it to me my Lord, and Eloah willing, I shall get you your war of tomorrow.”
Staring with the intenseness that I felt risen to a fever pitch within me I asked, “What are you planning?”
As she backed away from the fire gracefully she shrugged and said, “Oh something, no doubt on the foolish side of what would be commonly done, to be sure.”
“Jafina ……” I called out warningly, as if I had exchanged roles with her late father, to which she only chuckled and said in response to my censoring tone, “I learned from the best.”
That said she was gone from the fire’s light, every instinctive urge within me bade me to go after her and put a stop to whatever she had in mind, but I remained where I was by force of will alone. As a leader I had learned that to let others excel and thus gain their own glory and recognition before Eloah one had to give them free reign to rise and fall on their own terms.
To stop Jafina was to limit the greatness of her potential and truly would my desire to pull her back from her reckless course be the same if she was some other woman that I had no interest in as a mate? Probably not and though remaining by the fire was the right thing to do any chance that I’d had of getting restful sleep had vanished far from me.
Closing my eyes I folded my hands and commenced to pray. Prayer was all I had now to affect the positive future of the woman that I wished to be mine above all others.
Tiredly I made my pleas known until in fatigue I collapsed to my side next to the fire forsaking the blankets altogether. I closed my eyes and did my best to let go of Jafina to whatever fate Eloah had reserved for her, but it was hard and yet I had nothing to succeed in if I didn’t trust my Elohim with what I wanted most.