Chapter 79: Volume 2 - CH 4.7

“The world? The machinations beneath?”

The jarl’s brows cocked. An action surely shared by all the room.

Indeed, they heard right: a machination. A device of deception. A contrivance about which the world was coiled and controlled. The unseen currents of an unseen maelstrom, which I’d sensed from winters before, only now given words for the very first time.

Alban shook his head slightly. “Your words are as a warren. Speak what you mean.”

“I’ve a tale that speaks of it aplenty,” I answered, “but one to be told another time; the village survivors wait and waste to this moment. Pray lend them your aid, and soon.”

A heavy moment. “…Below the orphanage, was it?” The jarl nodded to one of his húskarlar, whereupon the latter summarily left the atrium.

“Your defences, as well: they must needs be bolstered,” I went on. “Lest the survivors find your fólkheimr no less a ruin than their village.”

“You scry swords set on Hensen?”

“I do.”

The jarl squinted with slow relent. Is this all really a ruse? Or a rebellious spark from the flames of Man? Whichever his conclusion, I then continued on revealing the veiled motivations of the margrave for Hensen, and in addition, my strategic counsel as a commandant: that the Fiefguard very well means to march on this fólkheimr.

None of the Nafílim muttered a single word as I gave them all of mine. A sound surprise; I fully anticipated plugged ears for aught I had to say. Certainly they were not paying their collective attention without due caution, but due more so was some propriety for the lone foe meandering into their midst, to tell them what he dared not in the company of his kin. Such was the resolve that I gleaned from them as my words went on.

“…The Fiefguardsmen have you fixed in their sights. All one hundred-score of them and more,” I concluded.

The húskarlar hummed uneasily. There is much credence to the commandant’s counsel, they must’ve thought, but equal cause for concern, if so. Two-thousand soldiers set on sacking Hensen was threatening enough—too much a threat for the fólkheimr’s present defences, most likely.

Fielding a large force against Hensen was heretofore a fraught stratagem, what with the woods in the way of an easy march. All Londosius had endeavoured to this point were mere skirmishes.

It was my work as commandant that proved the vicissitude: Ström’s soldiery suffered less, whilst the local Nafílim all the more. With dwindled numbers, Hensen could ill-afford to waylay the Fiefguard’s wooded march and field its own defences in the same stroke. The margrave well-reaped what I’d sown, and I surmised he would soon amass as large a host as could cross the forest.

Hence my prediction of a force of at least two-thousand Fiefguardsmen, a number that weighed heavily on the húskarlar’s hearts.

“…A weapon, your words are, turned upon your own kingdom. You mean to tread a treasonist?”

Lowly aired words from the jarl’s already low timbre. From his barbed leer upon me, I yet sensed an ire for more foolery that might issue from my lips.

“Londosius is yet my homeland, ruesome and rotted though it may be. I mean not to nock an arrow aflame against its spans, but just the same, I could not stay myself from warning you all of the reckoning to come.”

“What moved you?” he asked.

“Weariness. What else but weariness? The innocent and faultless, divested and sent to their deaths. Families, taken and torn asunder. These, I wish never to see again.”

“…’Again,’ you say.” A hint of sorrow from Alban’s eyes as he nodded mutedly. I saw then the severity of his mien thinning at last. “The intelligence, I should thank you for. But long-wary are we of an attack aimed at our walls.”

“Not wary enough, by my measure,” I was quick to point out. “The Fiefguardsmen are unfit for battle in the forests. They mean to sally straight northward from Balasthea, and once past the wood, wend eastward into Hensen. You must meet them with a force of your own, stationed not amongst the trees, but out in the plains west of your walls.”

“Mm…”

“Indeed, had you soldiers enough, harrying the Fiefguard in their wooded march might’ve proven more profitable. Yet ‘enough’ is neither what I see, nor what I’ve heard from my own reports. A phalanx to bar their entry is your soundest option.”

“‘Enough’ my braves once were,” the jarl uttered, “till you sat at the war-table.”

“I sat there that Balasthea’s battlements might not break. As I’ve said before, your braves who’ve met their end upon those walls earn no apology from me,” I reminded him. “That aside, your citizenry must needs be evacuated; the west district residents firstly, to wit. But they must be willing to part with their coin and treasures—the Fiefguardsmen lust for lucre, you see, and even a battle raging ‘round them ill-dulls their greed. Let them tarry and rummage, I say. It buys your forces time more precious again than what bait the Fiefguard might bite.”

“You strategise as keenly as you criticise, Man of the fort,” Alban remarked. “…But to let your kinsmen maraud? You must know, my people are meagre of means. I do not see your way. Did you not come to stall the pillaging? Or?”

“It’s more an insurance, should the western defences crumble,” I assured the jarl. “Were the Fiefguard to enter the fólkheimr, expect torches to be laid upon the houses. But that’s fine enough. Homes can be rebuilt, expenses can be paid for. Snatch victory from the Fiefguard’s hands, and you just as well snatch back all they’ve stolen. It’s your people that must be kept from harm; they are themselves treasures irreplaceable, after all. Let them know of this, and surely they’ll follow your every word.”

Sacrifices were needed.

A woundful reality, evident so long as Hensen lacked soldiers enough to stay the Fiefguard’s tide. So long as Hensen was, to the Nafílim here, a home to be protected no matter the price.

Of course, no stratagem would be suffered that so feeds the meek and innocent to the maws of war. Thus did I table any tactic that, at most, sacrifices that which can be sown again.

My counsel continued. Of the Fiefguard’s composition, its formations, its manoeuvres—aught I knew, the jarl and his húskarlar now knew, as well. This much divulgence was flagrant treason, surely, but a crime gladly committed were it to save even a single citizen of this fólkheimr.

Still, sins are sins, and this one my shoulders bore no less heavily. Though it were thoughts of Mia and those of like fate that convinced me of the weight’s worthiness.

♰

The jarlshǫll loomed behind as I left its ancient halls. Adjourned was the audience with Alban; with the warning relayed, I began my way back to the west gates whence I first entered.

Noonlight was fast fading. Already from the far horizon was the mirk of evening growing.

“I thought I’d spend the day chained and gaoled, truth be told,” I said. “Fresh air seldom smelled so sweet.”

“As it should,” Volker remarked, walking beside me. “Your safe return might sow the seed of peace between our peoples. This, the jarl has surmised.”

“Peace, you say…”

A pensive murmur from my lips, punctuated by glances and stares upon my person from the surrounding populace. In their myriad eyes were curiosity and caution. Some were sallowed with fear. A few glared with anger.

“Impossible, perhaps,” the war-chief went on. “This, too, the jarl knows. As do we. But even a broken seed must be sown, for whether it sprouts, none can know for true.”

Would that Londosian soil were more nurturing of such a precious sprout. But alas. The kingly realm brims and billows with war-winds ever bent on the snuffing of the Nafílim flame. That much I knew for certain.

How humbling, then, that it were the Nafílim themselves that could not completely spurn the seed of peace.

…Nay.

Perhaps theirs was the right heart to have. It was, to begin with, baleful and bewildering to so wish for a wasting war, one that wants no end before whichever party first reaches its reckoning.

“Generous be our clan-sire; were his hands mine, you would die by them whence you stand,” Volker continued. “Much good it do you to have thanks for him.”

“I’m plenty thankful, just as I am for leaving my sword at the gates. You don’t seem the sort to slay a man unarmed, after all. Not to my eyes, at least.”

“…Hmph.”

The war-chief was as much a richly-witted man as I first measured him to be. That’s to say, any arrow he lets loose, earnest or no, is an arrow that finds its mark, as it were. Yet for however whetted his wits were, he was equally a warrior of unmistakable mettle. Courtesy moved his compass—not by his blade would an unbladed soul be laid low.

“I’m right glad you all lent ear to my words, in any case,” I confessed. “And with rather cooled veins, no less.”

“We are a people of principle. We judge for what a heart beats, not what blood courses through it—even should it be the heart and blood of a Man.”

“The heart, is it…”

“Still, we know well of doubt and fear. The same we have for you—and enmity besides, steeled by the hard-fought centuries between our forebears both.”

“That, I’ll not gainsay.”

The Jarl Alban. His húskarlar withal. It was cold decorum and discretion that craved the lending of their ears for the words of a Man. And as well, whatever gleanable advantage that might avail them against the attack to come.

Yet Volker revealed the right of it—undercurrent to their calculated tolerance was enmity, to be sure. A current pushed by past partings with their comrades-in-arms. And it was certain: not few amongst the húskarlar have also lost family and loved ones in the waging of this war.

All things told, their judgement found my admittance just, even as their hearts howled with hate for the Man before them. The staying of their readied blades was solely for whatever brighter days this strange occasion might herald—not on account of some fancied forgiveness for me or my kinsmen.

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Hm…

My kinsmen…

How might I have carried myself, I wonder? Were I saddled with the same sorrow, the same animosity as the húskarlar and their people?

And in light of their losses, what—and who—have I myself to lose?

Emilie, Felicia—they and others make for an unequal comparison. After all, fighting is their livelihood. War is their art. Long have they made peace with their own mortality.

Nay…

Suppose I have for myself some dear and gentle soul, who waits beyond the bounds of the battlefield for my safe return.

Suppose further that she be deprived. On a day like any other, deprived asudden of her dignity, of her very life.

What would become of me?

Of Rolf Buckmann, as he stands amidst the ruins of aught and all he once cherished?

“…I can scarce imagine.”

“Mm? What is it you mumble, Man?”

“Ah—no, it’s nothing.”

Indeed.

‘I can scarce imagine.’

Such would be my only answer in this matter.

Those who know loss. Those who know tragedy. Whirling within the depths of their hearts is both resentment and rancour well beyond the imaginations of those who know not.

Thus do these sufferers suffer further. Their pain begets pain.

And thus have I learned never to feign shallow sympathy, for it be only salt upon their open wounds. But staying the salting hand, recognising the pointlessness of pity—these were my sole recourse, and what poor recourse they are.

Silence be of little solace and succour. What, then, can I do?

“Chief!”

A voice, tugging me from the thorns of thought. Its master, a lad with lividness in his visage, veered to Volker, having just passed by the both of us in our westward walk.

“What’s this about?” he pressed Volker. “Why does a Man walk within our walls!?”

The war-chief raised a palm. “Calm, Kunz. There is reason enough.”

“Calm? Calm!? He’s a Man, Chief! A foe in our fólkheimr!” yelled this “Kunz”. With blunt briskness did he then brush aside Volker and step straight to me. His hands sprang forth, shoving me back. “…Murderer! Why are you come!? Whose end seek you now!?”

I stood my ground, wordless. Seeing my silence, Kunz came up once more to catch my collars.

“Speak, enemy!” he howled up at my face. “You savour much of our blood! How much more till you’re sated!?”

Even then, I kept quiet.

“Speak, I said!”

‘I came not to kill—not you, not your dear ones. Not anyone.’

This, I could not give air. Whether from knowing well they’d be words most unsought by Kunz, or from being left speechless in the face of his fury. For there were tears running down the cheeks of this lad. The eyes that shed them were as daggers piercing my bosom.

What pain.

What wrenching, piercing pain.

Ever was this so. When met with the lament of those stricken by loss, their pain was as my own. One that seemed to bore holes in my heart.

“Kunz. Calmness. Let him free,” Volker soothed the lad, laying a hand upon the latter’s shoulder and pulling him gently back. Kunz relented and released me from his clutches, but not from his stabbing stare. Volker spoke on. “Explanations enough I have for you to hear. But for now, go. And give rest to your veins.”

The lad had little mind for heedance. He glared on and on at me, tearfully frowning and furrowed to the fullest.

“Kunz. You have heard me.”

“…Yes. Calmness,” Kunz broke his silence. “I’ve wounded the winds. Forgive me, good Chief.”

With that muttered, the lad left our presence, but not before giving me one last gouging glare. I looked on at his awaying shoulders, spiritless as they were.

“…He’s lost someone, hasn’t he?” I observed.

“That he has. A bride-to-be. As one, their hearts were, from their greenest days,” Volker revealed, walking forth once more. “The wedding was soon.”

A betrothed, torn from Kunz’s side.

Our lots, his and mine, could not be any more different. Surely he could’ve given his bride-to-be a life most blissful—were she yet alive.

Still, we’re the same, he and I. Surely so. Sadness is in him, thus he sheds tears. Anger burns him, thus he bellows and lays blame.

What are these but the same pains suffered by Men?

The very same.

In a Nafíl is life. A will. A heart.

What separates us, then?

Naught.

Kunz’s tears enlightened me anew to this truth. He loves what is beautiful, and loves little what is otherwise. Of this, I am certain.

Beyond a window, within billows of auburn leaves, a tree in its autumn dress.

Cackling and crackling in a hearth, a humming fire, bright and warm.

Freshly stretched and tanned, a span of well-made leather, uniquely fragrant.

After a day’s labour, a gulp of cold and crisp water for the parched throat.

These, too, he has love for. As do I. We are one and the same. And yet, we can scarce live amongst one another.

Why?

On and on, I looked upon Kunz’s fading figure, whilst the unanswered questions only burgeoned in my bosom.

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