Chapter 3
Bastion kept his fire burning all night.
After spending so many anxious nights on the island, he didn’t quite believe that he was free of the imp’s torment.
And, if he was honest, he was hoping for another glimpse of the Yvri maiden.
Her eyes haunted him, bright and sharp as they were. Her vertical pupils reminded him of a serpent about to strike. He wished he hadn’t been so tongue-tied.
He spent another day in the cove, staring at the sky, listening to the waves, and hoping she would return. Dragon-kin were fairly solitary, preferring to live in pairs or small pods, but still, a single female seemed unusual.
Perhaps she’d been a figment of his imagination. He’d expected visions and battles of inner darkness on the island and instead got the imp. If I’m going to be terrorized by something, he thought with a sigh, let it be a beautiful woman.
As he was organizing his things to speed up breaking camp in the morning, a journal fell out of his bag. Bastion picked it up and considered the leather cover, dyed a deep emerald, before he flipped through the blank pages.
“Take it,” Endre had said when they parted ways. He’d spoken gently, but there was a command in them that Bastion couldn’t ignore. “Write something down. You’ll feel better.”
If he’d been anyone else, Bastion would have punched him. But they weren’t best friends for nothing.
There, in the shelter of that little cove, he opened the book and wrote: The Account of Sir Bastion.
He stared at the text, a feeling he couldn’t name ripping through his chest as he read the title Sir.
That single word held an ocean of meaning.
It encompassed a decade of blood, sweat, and tears.
The late nights and early mornings, aching muscles and broken bones.
He imagined writing it for the first time with triumph and hope for the future.
Not alone on a beach in the shadow of defeat.
He scratched out the title and turned the page.
Reading previous Accounts had eased many of his fears, and peering into the past had been enlightening.
Of course, there were more recent Accounts, like Endre’s, but the knights of old who now lived on only in songs fascinated him.
That they could speak to him from the distant past felt like a gift.
He was angry that he had nothing of value to pass on. That he was a broken link in the chain of knights who had come before him. Documenting his failure only brought that into sharp focus.
Bastion scrawled three sentences.
I encountered nothing and no one. My prayers have gone unanswered all my life, so I should not be surprised it is the same here. If there was ever a god that favored me, they are sleeping or dead.
He considered all he was omitting, but shame overrode his guilt, smothering any other thoughts like a despondent blanket. Madness was an acceptable outcome of a Trial, but without a Godmark he feared he wouldn’t just lose his knighthood, but his freedom.
With a bitter grimace, he closed the book and shoved it back into his bag. He gazed out over the dark water, wishing the Yvri maiden had truly been a goddess.
__________
At first light, he climbed back up to the bluffs and continued south. Bastion wasn’t sure what he hoped to find on this pilgrimage, but his thoughts and gaze strayed to his right often, watching the sea. He wondered where the Yvri maiden had gone, and what had drawn her to shore.
Much like the island, he saw nothing and no one. Two cool, windy days passed, the sky dark and light by turns as clouds drifted by overhead. Only the fleeting calls of songbirds kept him company as he traversed sweeping bluffs dotted with stands of scrubby forest.
On the third morning, a smudge against the clear horizon drew his eye. Bastion traveled towards it with a growing sense of unease curdling in his stomach. By the afternoon, the smudge resolved itself into black smoke. Then the wind shifted, and an acrid scent made him cringe.
He picked up his pace, scanning the terrain for threats as he went.
Cries of distress met him as he crested a ridge and looked down upon a small fishing village.
No more than a dozen charred shacks stood amid ashen snow churned to mud.
Gaunt, exhausted residents hurried back and forth with buckets of water and makeshift bandages.
In the shadow of the decimation, grubby children wailed in the arms of older siblings and grandparents.
Concern turned to disbelief. Bastion covered his nose against the putrid smell of burnt flesh.
A dog growled at him as he approached an old woman rocking two distraught toddlers.
She mumbled a song against their dirty hair as he knelt before her, whether to comfort them or herself, he couldn’t tell.
“Are you hurt, grandmother?”
Rheumy eyes lifted to assess him. When her gaze fell to the sword at his side, he expected her to recoil. Instead, they flickered with recognition and she sighed.
“You’re with the royal guard?” she asked. Bastion nodded. “Praise the goddesses! We were attacked in the night! They ransacked our homes!”
She nuzzled the older child tucked against her side as a few tears escaped her eyes.
“Who’s in charge?” Bastion asked.
The woman lifted a hand and pointed with a gnarled finger.
“There, with the healer,” she said.
Bastion turned, and his heart leapt.
The Yvri maiden.
Daylight confirmed what he’d suspected–she was beautiful, with a statuesque posture, sloping cheekbones and sharp, intelligent eyes. A storm of thoughts flooded his mind, hope and excitement briefly blinding him to the ruined village.
She knelt over a badly burned man, her face intense.
Beside her, the village elder hovered, wringing his thin hands like a mouse.
As he approached, Bastion saw a half-healed gash along the elder’s face and purple bruising radiating down his jaw.
Bastion looked around, noting the other villagers.
The worst of their injuries had been addressed but not fully healed.
The man on the ground appeared to have been pulled from the wreckage of the nearest home.
Blackened skin and cloth combined with the visceral red of crusted blood.
A disheveled woman held his head in her lap, and he kept his eyes locked on hers as tears streamed down his cheeks.
The way his face screwed up made it clear he was in excruciating pain.
He whimpered, as if holding back a scream.
The village elder looked ready to vomit, but the Yvri maiden cared for the man with the compassionate detachment of a practiced healer.
A soft, blue glow emanated from her fingertips, nearly invisible in the daylight as she pulled his clothing away from the burns knitting themselves back together.
Her hands hovered over one area and then another, lingering over sensitive places like his fingers and face.
When she reached for his far side, Bastion’s eyes caught on the delicate pattern of scales along her arms, the dreamy blue and purple of the sea as night approached.
Her patient groaned and bit back a wail. Bastion shook his head and remembered the gravity of the situation. He tore his eyes away from her to address the elder. “What happened here?”
The man startled, hunching his shoulders and twisting his wispy beard.
“P-pirates,” the elder stammered. “In the n-night.”
Bastion furrowed his brow as he looked around.
Pirates typically targeted merchant vessels and passenger ships–prey with valuables on board.
From what he could see, this village had nothing.
It wasn’t even vulnerable, perched on the bluffs over sheer cliffs.
What could these people possibly have that pirates would want?
“Did Lord Kyrith send you?” the elder asked, his words laced with hope.
“Are you his vassals?”
“Y-yes, sir.”
An unexpected flush crept up Bastion’s neck. He knew the elder didn’t mean anything by the honorific, but it made him flinch all the same. In fact, he thought guiltily, if he hadn’t stayed in that cove an extra night, he might have come upon this village in time to defend them.
“He didn’t send me, but I’m here to help,” Bastion said. “Have you sent word of the attack?”
The elder began to shake his head, cutting off the movement with a grimace. He covered his injury with one hand.
“We can’t,” he answered. “The pirates burned the dovecote.”
Anger heated Bastion’s blood until the crisp winter wind diminished to something inconsequential.
“Where is the nearest town with a garrison?”
The elder pointed south. “Cypress Shoals is that way. A day and a half’s walk.”
“I’m acquainted with Lord Kyrith,” Bastion said. “I’ll go and send a message to him.”
The elder practically burst into tears with relief. “Oh, thank you, kind sir!”
Bastion scanned the darkening sky and the crumbling village. “I’ll leave at daybreak. How can I help in the meantime?”
When the elder regained his composure, they assessed the damage together.
Only one home had escaped the fire enough to be usable.
Bastion got to work putting it back together as best he could, using fragmented pieces of wood from the surrounding destruction to reinforce it and provide shelter from the elements.
He directed a few of the women to clear out the inside to be used as an infirmary and sent a handful of calmer children to gather armfuls of grass for thatching.
All the while, the Yvri maiden went from person to person, healing those too injured to move.
Bastion watched her from the corner of his eye, fascinated.
She stepped around debris with the grace of a dancer, her long, blue-black hair swinging around her hips and falling forward each time she knelt.
The pain and fear of the villagers immediately softened in her presence, and Bastion wondered if she was using her telepathic gifts to soothe them.