RAIN WAS POURING FROM UNIFORM GREY SKIES, all clouds having lost their individual shapes and melted into a single sea above, and below, the rain swamped the way to Merhioch. What had been a firm dirt path that meandered its way through the short-grassed plains and to the ruins of Merhioch's giant gates, had now dissolved into a muddy trench, black as coal, that, following its usual course, stretched into the distance and up a small, barren hill, disappearing into the horizon.
Two men on horseback trotted along in the downpour, keeping well away from the mud track and staying on the short grass. The man in the lead was sat astride a placid-looking mare and held a plain demeanor about him. Below his piercing amber eyes, he had on his pale-olive face a very large and hooked nose, like the beak of a hawk, and around that massive nose, his face was lined with the soft scars of sombre age, all the lines left by the smiles and frowns, and all of that was tangled amongst wild hair –a wildest hair that seem more like strands of copper-wire, if only copper-wire was matted grey that whitened out towards the ends.
Behind him, followed a younger man who looked not a day more than twenty, and his expression was fairly miserable atop the majestic blue-hued full black mare that he rode. The powerful black kept throwing her head this way and that, a feisty horse whose muscles rippled under the pure midnight coat, yearning to break free of this humble trot and dash across the slick grass and over soggy dirt. The young man's stamina petered out and his face looked more and more haggardly as he wrestled his noble steed over and over again.
Different from the old man, who wore only for comfort: a few layers of woolen tunic, trousers, and an oiled wool-felt coat to ward off the rain, the youngster had equipped himself a leather cuirass over his breast just nestled beneath his coat, and the armor's two holsters held long daggers that were silvery with a -tint.
His practicality ended with solely weaponry, for his hair was fair like gold and oiled so that it shined with a bright lustre, and it was worn in Salient fashion: slung across the back and tied with blue strings in three big bundles, each as long as the forearm and thick as the thigh. As the rain slowly drizzled down the hood of his felt-wool coat, the three great bundles that had once been styled by a fleet of handmaids had now become three great sponges, each having sopped to the full the chilling rainwater, bouncing ponderously as his horse turned each gait, and kept a constant trickle going down the nape of his neck.
The Merochene plateau wasn't all that cold, but setting out from the roadside tavern in the morn and enduring hours of sleet began to take its toll, and so the two Saliens began shivering, the younger man before the older, and they were still yet to see any changes in the repetitive terrain of the plateau, nor in the sky that stayed ever the same uniform grey all across from horizon to horizon, with no hint whatsoever of any shaped clouds or a sudden brightening in the heavens. There was instead a barely noticeable dimming and worsening of the winds, not that it was useful in telling something concrete about the time.
As they crested another small hillock, the older man, still seeing nothing, tightened his reigns to his chest and both the mare and rider drew to a still, their thoughts perhaps wandering together and musing on the situation. As the young man came up the hillock from behind, looking sapped to the core from all the grappling with his gallant black, which often pretended to be calm, its eyes going dull, then suddenly yanking her snout away from the reigns very suddenly.
'Arrun,' the old man named Ettyles said over the pitter-patter of the rain, 'we must rest and camp here tonight. The winds, they do not look like they shall be dying anytime soon, and we still see not a single sign of the next wayward inn-house, and even our trusty battalion felt-wools have been soaked to the fleece. At this rate, I fear we may find ourselves frozen corpses by the morn, if we try to ford these hellish clouds now! Now, boy. Act the part of the squire already and unsaddle your uncle!'.
The young man, Arrun, rode the black up atop of the slippery hillock next to his uncle while unlatching himself, and in a swift manner, leapt down from the black and made quite a splash on the bare mud of the hillock. The drenched reins held in one hand, holding the snorting, undaunted black, he moved quickly to untie Ettyles with the other.
Seeing Arrun's effortless jump, he rued softly to the rain, 'Ah, gone youth! Oh, falling of the sands of the hourglass that takes all, if only you didn't bestow it again! I wouldn't have been so jealous.'
Arrun, still working at the straps, not exactly recovered from wrestling the black yet, glumly said, 'Sorry, Sire, I hadn't thought that you of all people would be jealous of me.'
'Oh, so it's Sire now!' Ettyles gave a small smile, 'Never mind, my good nephew. Thank you for undoing those straps, I'll get down by myself just fine. You take trusty Zea here and take out the leather tent from my saddlebags.' He climbed down from horseback carefully, lest he slipped from the wet stirrups, and Arrun rounded the other side of Zea and took out the bag that held the wood poles and the oiled-leather tent canvas.
Neither the volume of the rain nor the uniformity of the sky had let up. Ettyles patted his Zea and moved away, his eyes sweeping across the surroundings of the hillock. Behind him, he heard his nephew come up to him, the boots going squelch and plonk in the soggy mud.
'Squire Arrun. The usual, make a field report and plan.'
Arrun's face, already testy, grew testier at the request. 'Aye, Sire.' He stepped forth and looked around, shielding his eyes from the rain, and said, 'By starting with drawing the most basic conclusion, it would appear that we are on a hillock.' He took a breath in thought.
'Astute observation.' Ettyles remarked. 'Very clever. Utterly simple task, that is, to distinguish your imperial education from any lesser one.'
From the corner of his eye, Arrun shot back a small glare, 'As I was saying, Sire,' his not-fully-matured voice cracking slightly, 'by starting with drawing the most basic conclusions, we can also see that the Ainteles,' he pointed to the horizon right side of the way, at looming shadows that thrusted their peaks through the clouds, 'are still to our west, which means that we are still going south, Merhioch, which can only be a good thing. Sire.' He turned around and stared at his uncle, as if daring him to interrupt. Ettyles nodded amiably and gestured as if to say continue.
'Since we have not strayed from the path and the southern direction, Sire, and since this hillock is about fifteen of me -I counted on the way up- then we can say that the southern horizon that the road meanders into is about eighteen miles to twenty miles away, by the horizon conversion form published by esteemed cleric Keroularion. Yet, the smoke of the next wayward inn has not appeared anywhere in our vision yet, which means that the directions we received for the inn sites were wrong.'
Ettyles interjected, 'Or the next inn had ran out of business.'
Arrun nodded, 'Or that. Right now, if we are to search for a place to stay, that sudden rocky height over there with the jutting slab should provide enough cover for the horses and for us to set up our tents. Sire.'
Ettyles gave a slow clap. 'Wonderful,' he said matter-of-factly, 'Let's set out then.'
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The warmth given off by the little cone-shaped lamp was enough to stop all the shivering and teeth's chattering, by the time they had hung up all their clothes to dry under the canopy of the protruding rock slab, the blood had returned to their cheeks, and all they had left was a minor case of the sniffles. Arrun sat aside by himself, as per usual, in the corner of a four-men oiled-leather tent, brooding silently while eating the stew that they had brewed with the heat from the lamp.
Ettyles, sat just outside the tent but beneath the rock roof, finished faster than Arrun as usual, as he did not sulk during dinner. After leaving the bowl by the pot for the squire, he went to check on the horses at the other end this 'roofed' place, which did not that much, for the rain just blew in diagonally and wetting anyone outside the tent directly.
The horses Zea and Shaecher, the black mare, had been blanketed too in oiled-leather when they had set up camp. As he went near them, they began snorting and stamping and giving him the wary eye.
'Now, now,' He said as he approached one slow step at a time, and he slowly took out a pouch of dried apples and carrots. The horses immediately stilled as they saw the pouch, and he took out the horse brush and began combing through Shaecher's inky coat as the zesty horse eagerly snapped up more than half the pouch.
His own horse, Zea, looked at him from across the stall with a look as if saying, 'why that whorse?'
'I know you can wait, girl. Stay a bit.'
Brushing down Shaecher took a long while, for her mane was so thick and lustrous the comb gets stuck every half a stroke, and the dirt and mud that caked it had hardened and was barely discernible against the similarly dark backdrop. His hands and wrists moved pedantically and slowly in swifter and smoother motions after a while, he became engrossed in the every strand of the mane that he was brushing, that he didn't notice his nephew come up behind him.
"This horse was a hassle." Arrun said, "when it hadn't rained, Shaecher was a mighty mare, queen of steeds. But as soon as the clouds gathered, she lost sight of her duty and could not make the slippery road anymore.'
'Oh?' Ettyles said without breaking his focus on the mane, 'What happened to Sire?' he mimicked the younger man, 'But jesting aside, do you mean to say that you only place your trust in the steed when the steed bears you without fail? Do you cast away the steed at the first moment it ceases to support you in a trial? Then that is no trust at all.'
'I am not talking about horses, Sire.' The young man spoke coldly, 'You betrayed us, Sire. Ettyles Reaundorre. Uncle. General Cainseilut, chief imperator of the Hoerlkens. That is many names for one man, for the man who sold Salient to Raoul for three breads and a false future. He played you right into his hand! Did you hear the screams of the burned? I tell you, from Merhioch the south Raoul the Scorch marched north and put eight entire cities to the torch, right till he scourged the walls of Salient itself! Do their screams echo inside your ear right now? Does it?'
A distance away, the tiny cone-shaped lamp that had held the hot flame, extinguished and darkness enveloped the small area under the outcrop. Ettyles' hands had stopped brushing the black's mane. They were still now, as if remembering something.
'It seems like you must remember something, for the iron-willed Ettyles Reaundorre, master of the Tower Arts, to lose your lamplight. Good. I hope you grieve, for it was you who gave the southern snake its teeth to tear our own throats open and fill our veins with death. You were the one who gave the keys to that snake and let him into Catasper, Treiuem, and Pravitch.' He spoke the last with venom dripping from his voice, 'maybe my parents weren't important enough in the Reaundorre family to be protected, were they? Of course not. You've met my parents, what, only once? I met you more only because, as sheer luck would have it, I was placed in the Hoerlkens for my squireship.' He spat, 'This mission is an absolute farce -inviting the Scorch who burned the Saliens by the thousands, making roads of char and skies of smoke, to become a joint-Emperor! I do not understand what you and the other senates are thinking, but, if ever fate will chance it that I should meet the Scorch in person, I shall then personally finish the job that you should have finished but never could. Good night. Sire.' Arrun turned to leave.
'Squire.' Ettyles said, 'Have I given you my permission to leave? Or does the rules of the Salien army mean so little to you that you would break it because you consider me a traitor to the state?'
Arrun thinned his lips, 'no, Sire.'
'Very well, at ease then, soldier. I have let you confess your feelings to me just now in an unprofessional outburst because, firstly, I know you have been raging to say that to my face since I picked you up in Catasper five days ago for this mission -all the sulking and the brooding spoke more than what came out of your mouth. It was childish, but you are a child, so it is forgiven. Secondly, no matter how you think it is, I am your uncle by relation, and I was the one assigned you to the Hoerlkens, not fate, though it seems like you would wish it had been. But wishes do not make the living, and so far, you have been sinking in your hurt and despair at losing your mother and father, and you have been suffering delusions regarding the workings of the world. The Salien Empire was doomed to fall, because we had run out of land to conquer. Now, Raoul "the Scorch", as you call him, controls the mining of Erescin, and, because His Eminence massacred Raoul's tribe, Raoul took his revenge. However, regardless of how things transpired, the only way for all the millions of people of the empire to have food to eat and water to drink in the near future, is to work with Raoul together and appeal to him, and His Eminence recognizes this fact. That is why we are here. After all, I do believe Ral is not evil at heart.'
'How can you say that?' Arrun said, 'that he is not evil? Is it because that his tribe and family was killed, Desert barbarians numbering only in the hundreds, that it should justify the burning of five hundred million people?'
'No, it will be very impossible for us to see the justification -but it has happened already, and yes, both sides are in the wrong. Kings start wars and the commoners suffer. That is how it has always been. It is like how you do not recognize the value of the few hundred people of the Árra-héito clan. You have measured the value of a life on a scale, while to Raoul, he would smash the scale every single time to avenge his family and tribe, and that was exactly what he did. You would do the same for your parents, but here what I urge you is to do is to simply stay quiet, and listen. I have watched the man you call "the Scorch" grow up from a reedy boy of the Red Sands to a man who placed the lives of his slaves above him. I would ask of you, my squire, to listen to the tale, of how I went south in search of the mythical Erescin, a stone that could harness the Tower Arts that we practice: the Uve and the Spirit, the tale of how I was saved by a young boy, a curious little creature of the sands, always pestering me to teach him Veros, and begging to go north with me. I would ask you to stay, in silence, and listen to the tale of the Ral-Drakarn, as this is how the Sand-people call the man who united them in defense against us. Would you stay and listen?'
Arrun frowned, 'Do I have a choice?'
'A tale forced down your throat is no tale at all. I would wish only for you to know the truth, the complete truth, and then decide for yourself. I would never command you to listen to an old man's blabber -I am not that narcissistic yet.' The cone-shaped lamp that was left in the tent began to burn once again, allowing Ettyles to see the young man's turmoil plain on his face.
'I have decided. I will give you my time.'
Ettyles gave a small, small smile, but it pulled all the way at the creases on the old man's temple.
'What greater thing could one possibly ask for?'