25. Loran
25
LORAN
“No, Your Highness, we shall not! We shall not let you go!”
Three people had lain down on her path, preventing Loran from going forward. One was a man who looked at least seventy. The other two seemed to be his daughters. Behind them were about a dozen others with determined expressions.
“Why must we give up?” one of the women on the ground cried. Her face was wet with tears, soon to freeze on her face. It was a cold winter, even for Arland. What if they should get sick? She remembered how difficult it had been that winter when the winds seeped into her house and her daughter became bedridden for much of the season.
There were nearly a hundred people following her now. They had beseeched her not to surrender herself, and then joined her in her walk, saying they would at least see her off. Many more had turned back when they heard what Loran was going to do.
To the three people lying in the road in front of her now, pleading with her to stop, Loran spoke as gently as possible.
“You say you cannot give up,” she said, “but I have only been fighting since late autumn. It has been less than a season. You shall forget me soon enough.”
“Late autumn? We have been awaiting Your Highness’s arrival for twenty years!”
A woman in the crowd behind her shouted, “I sell fruits and greens in Kingsworth. Do you know why I am here in the country every winter with my relatives? It’s because my whole family was killed by that prefect! I cannot bear the cold, empty house in the winter.”
Loran knew this feeling all too well. The only difference between the woman and herself was that she had gone to the volcano instead of her relatives’ house.
“But the prefect is dead,” Loran said, almost apologetically. “Perhaps this is justice enough—”
“They will send another to take his place! I no longer have a family they could murder, but what about those who do?”
“But surely the new prefect would not be as cruel as Hesperus?”
Another shouted, “How can we know that? What if he’s worse? Then who will fight for us? Why must we live under such fear?”
Then why don’t you rise up instead of asking me to do it, she almost said. But she’d been the one who set out trying to become king. No one had asked her to do it. It wouldn’t do to complain about it now.
Who else will emerge to unite the people of Arland? How many people would have to die to take down one Powered soldier or a single chariot?
She hesitated in her answer. And in that hesitation, the shouting came in waves.
The old man lying down in front of her rose to a kneel before Loran with his head bowed.
“We who block your way know you will not change your mind because of us. But please, consider our words. When the princess defeated the legion and killed the prefect, we became full of hope! And we have been preparing to accept Arland’s new king with joy in our hearts. I know many who have been sharpening the spears they have hidden in farming sheds, ready to fight under your command. Please think of them.”
A harsh wind blew down the road. Loran approached the old man and tried to help him to his feet, but he refused her hand and lay prostrate instead.
“But if I do not surrender, many will die,” Loran pleaded.
“Is there anyone here who would regret such a death!” shouted Wilfrid from behind. A murmur of assent rose from the crowd.
Loran gripped the old man’s arm and said, a little louder, “There are a hundred of you. What of the many who did not come? There must be those in Kingsworth and the hamlets who fear the Empire’s reprisals, who resent me for spoiling their peace. It is not your place to speak in their stead.”
The old man who lay prostrate righted himself and stood. He trembled with cold.
“But who was first to do as they willed with our lives?” he boomed.
It was herself. She had nothing to say to that.
“The princess blames herself,” said the old man, “but this is not so. It is not the princess who wants to decide if we live or die. It is those who threaten to kill us if we do not obey.”
The woman from Kingsworth spoke once more.
“That day when Your Highness came to Liberation Square… no, Fire-Dragon Square, as it had always been called. In Fire-Dragon Square, I was there! Did the people not rise with their tools from home, ready to fight by your side?”
Loran could give no answer. This was not an opponent she could convince or vanquish. Wordlessly, she went past the people who stood before her. Some of them rushed to lie down in front of her farther along the path, but she simply walked around them.
A voice called from behind. “Princess, we still shall follow. If we do not beseech you for the remainder of your journey, we shall live to regret it for the rest of our lives.”
That much, she owed the people. Loran nodded and walked on.
Loran’s progress slowed as her followers grew. She did not spend her nights in inns, preferring roadsides and empty fields. The dragon’s power made her oblivious to cold, and she was afraid wherever she entered, people would overwhelm then follow her. She urged the others to seek comfortable shelter, but the people were determined to sleep where their princess slept.
That night, it was especially cold. The sight of the shivering people huddled against one another on the fields shorn of their harvest made her sad. There were about three hundred gathered now. Some of them were the elderly and children.
Loran had settled down a distance away, not wanting to be a bother. Wilfrid approached her. Whether it was her manner or her prodigious size and build, Wilfrid was often tasked with conveying messages to Loran, who sometimes heard the others refer to her as “General Wilfrid” in jest.
“Princess. Many are cold. We’re trying to gather kindling.”
Why was she being told this?
“I see.”
“There are only empty fields here around us. We were hoping to ask some nearby farmhouses for straw.”
“But straw burns so quickly.”
“Indeed, it doesn’t last long, but… The harvest wasn’t long ago, they ought to have much of it.”
Loran was not a farmer. She did not know much about the land, but there was something that bothered her.
“Would they not require the straw for themselves?”
“People freeze. They should be able to spare some meant for their cattle and thatching to save lives.”
“If it were ours to use, certainly. But we cannot ask the people every night to give it up for us.”
Then Loran had a thought.
“Well. You have followed me here, so I shall do something about it.”
She stood and walked to where the people sat huddled and freezing. They gathered around her, thinking she was about to make a speech, and shook awake the ones who had gone to sleep.
Loran drew out Wurmath. The long blade glowed and began to heat up. The people gasped.
“This was a gift from the fire-dragon of the mountain.”
“You have met Its Excellency?” said many.
“I have.” The locals referred to the fire-dragon as “Its Excellency.” Those in Kingsworth had not. Perhaps all Arlanders had in the past.
Until now, she had told only Emere how she had come upon the sword. She took off her eyepatch and staked the sword into the earth. Her left eye began to heat. Through the darkness she saw each shivering face. All hoping for freedom. All putting their hopes into Loran.
“Princess, your eye…!”
Loran said, “Do not be alarmed if I shift in appearance.”
Her left eye burned blue. The heat of Wurmath grew. A fire burst forth from the soil. Dry stubs of stalks burned, and the earth melted. It reminded Loran of looking down over the lip into the volcano. Soon, the heat was so intense that no ordinary person could stand next to it. The people that had been crowded around her backed away a little from the pit of lava.
“How could it…”
“A miracle!”
“I have heard rumors, but this…”
Faces that had been ashen only a moment ago glowed warmly by the light of the molten earth. Hands thrust into armpits now extended toward its heat. Loran held the hilt, trying not to let the lava pit grow too large nor let it cool too quickly. Wurmath gripped back.
Their surroundings brightened. The eyes of the people getting warm grew wide as they started to rise to their feet. They were staring at the sky. Loran raised her eyes as well.
A bright white-and-blue pillar of light had pierced through the clouds as if all the stars in the sky had gathered above her and burned, making their surroundings as bright as day.
As they made a turn around a hill a few days later, the Arland fortress of the Twenty-Fifth Legion came into view. An Imperial building made of stone and slathered in lime. To Arlanders, it symbolized their conqueror. She glanced back toward Kingsworth to the north, hours away from this eyesore of a fort. If she had been alone, it should have taken three days to get here; instead, it had taken her seven days.
No one in the fortress would think she was there to surrender. Thousands were now following her, many of whom had seen the pillar of light in the night. They were mostly country folk, but there were also not a few from Kingsworth.
Wilfrid approached. She now held not a staff but a sturdy spear, courtesy of two blacksmiths and a leatherworker who distributed weapons and leather armor to whoever was trained in the fighting arts. Some also carried the arms of the prefect’s guard, whether former guards themselves or having stolen them off a rack. Loran counted some of her neighbors and former pupils of her own small sword school. But somehow, they did not seem to recognize her.
“Princess. Do you still wish to surrender?”
Wilfrid sounded almost amused.
Emere had said he had seen her destiny. Loran saw something like it now, in everyone gathered here. Even if the Twenty-Fifth would end Arland, or the Star of Mersia turn the country into ash, it would all be part of the destiny of this land.
“I do not,” Loran said quietly to Wilfrid with a smile. Then she unsheathed Wurmath from its scabbard and held it aloft as she turned to address the crowd. “We shall attack the Empire’s fortress. Those who wish to return may do so. But all are welcome to join the Princess of Arland in the liberation of our homeland!”
A deafening roar answered her.