Chapter Forty-Three Felnir #3
Felnir saw anguish play over Wohtin’s aged features and feared that the old man’s cowardice would fail them in this moment.
Should he refuse, Felnir’s menda would be trapped here, and he doubted the Kearling’s welcome would last forever.
He opened his mouth to issue a command, gambling that some final remnant of loyalty would overcome Wohtin’s doubts.
But Felnir stopped when he realised the pain he saw on the old man’s face was born of guilt rather than fear.
“I should never have left your side,” he wept, grasping the stone hand and holding it tight. “Can you forgive…?”
I believe I can… understand, Tanira said, a sad smile curving her lips. In time. For we shall have so much of it.
She removed her stone hands from the Sword of the Altvar, sending Felnir into an untidy sprawl.
He watched her form sublime back into the wall, taking Wohtin with her.
The flesh of the old man’s arm took on the red hues and textures of the cliff face, as did his clothing.
He appeared to feel no pain, however, stepping into his new state of existence without hesitation, nor even a backward glance at the king he had helped raise.
As the two figures faded into the stone, Felnir heard a fading echo of Tanira’s voice: Remember, Sword Bearer… I have other curses…
Hearing the thump of Antak’s staff, Felnir looked up to find the Kearling regarding him with hard-eyed intent.
“Counsel is ended,” he said. “And your time here is done. We will give you two days to rest. In that time, your warriors will keep to themselves. We will not allow them to pollute our people. Come the second dawn, you will be provided with sufficient boats to carry your army north to the land you seek. I hope you hold my mother’s words close, Felnir Skyrnrak, for they were no idle threat. ”
A great many Kearling came to watch when the Sea King’s menda departed the place its denizens called the Jewel and their Ascarlian visitors had taken to calling the Red Canyons.
Before now, Felnir hadn’t realised how populous this decidedly unique settlement was.
It transpired that there were outlying villages carved into the surrounding maze of cliffs.
Sygna would surely have calculated a more accurate number but, by his own reckoning, there must have been over thirty thousand people crowding the shoreline alone, with more thronging the galleries ascending the sandstone walls behind.
Antak and Kurin stood closest to the shore, the tall man maintaining an impassive demeanour while his sister favoured Felnir with a parting smile.
The lingering pity in her eyes made him keen to be on their way.
His sentiment was not shared by all in his menda.
After their tribulations upon the Swathe, many of Audheld’s company had humbly begged Antak and Kurin for leave to remain.
They were all sternly rejected by the former, and politely refused by the latter.
Although these would-be deserters attracted a tirade rich in vituperative condemnation from Beyorn, Felnir ordered no punishment taken, saying, “Mercy is the least reward deserved by those who survived the Swathe.”
It required no less than three hundred boats to carry the Sea King’s menda downriver.
Felnir took the fact that so many had been freely given as a measure of their hosts’ keenness to see them gone.
“Stick to the main channel and it will take you north,” Antak had advised.
“The current flows fast and you should reach the coast within twenty days.”
“And what awaits us there?” Felnir asked, the question provoking the sole smile he had seen from this man.
“I don’t know, but Mother said only death lies in the north.”
It was another two days before they cleared the canyons, the surrounding country subsiding into the same arid scrubland with which they had become so dolefully familiar.
Yet, while the mood among Felnir’s warriors could hardly be called jovial, the fever did not return.
He saw none of the signature slack-mouthed vacancy or persistent silence that warned of imminent disappearance.
The woman in the wall had kept her promise.
Although the effects of hunger lingered upon many, the copious supplies provided by the Kearling meant the menda maintained a steady pace as they worked their paddles into the river’s busy current.
Felnir ordered that they row until the onset of twilight whereupon they would seek out a suitable landing site to encamp for the night.
By the second week, the river’s previously clear waters took on a muddy churn and its flow became so swift in places as to be dangerous.
At some points, the rapids ahead presented such a violent obstacle that Felnir was forced to order the entire menda to shore.
Balancing the boats upon their heads, the host would then march on to find calmer waters.
It was during these intervals that the menda suffered its first bouts of desertion.
The numbers were small, a dozen the first night and half that the second, and all were those not captured by the sword’s glow.
They took supplies, but even so, given the barren nature of the country, Felnir doubted they would get far.
“Tracks follow the river south, my lord,” Falk reported after scouting the absconders’ route. “Reckon they’re trying to get back to the Red Canyons.”
“Then I pity them if they make it,” Felnir replied, recalling Antak’s avowed desire not to allow his people to be polluted by an Ascarlian presence.
Once more Beyorn wanted to hunt down the miscreants and once more Felnir wouldn’t allow it.
“We have no time for such distractions. In fact, spread the word. Any who wish to leave can take all the supplies they can carry and good fortune to them. But ensure they know the welcome they’re likely to receive from the Kearling this time will not be so warm. ”
His word clearly still held some sway with the un-captured, for they reached calmer waters three days later with no more desertions.
When they encamped that night, he sought out Audheld and asked if she had been tempted to join the deserters.
“I began this journey sworn to you,” she replied.
“And I will end it thus. Besides,” she added, turning her gaze north, “I’m keen to see what awaits us. ”
Felnir’s sea-honed senses began to smell salt on the wind even before the coast came into view.
The river had broadened and deepened in recent days, so much so that he insisted they keep to the shallows fringing the eastern bank.
The following dawn broke upon the sight of gulls swooping low over tidal mudflats.
The surrounding country was also more verdant now, the banks thick with tall reeds and the land beyond a maze of salt marsh.
When they sighted smoke rising above the horizon, Felnir ordered the menda to land and they followed the river to a small settlement of mean cottages clustered around a shallow bay.
His warriors remained concealed in the reeds while Felnir took Falk and Tyrheld ahead to scout the village.
There were about two dozen dwellings in all, stone built with roofs fashioned from thatched reeds.
A long parade of fishing boats sat upon the beach, which Felnir found curious for the tide was in.
Beyond the bay, the waters were shrouded in mist but the vague outline of a forest rising from the opposite shore marked it as a fjord and not a sea.
They found few people about, mostly older folk who displayed neither fear nor particular interest in the arrival of three armed newcomers.
Felnir was surprised to find himself addressed, albeit in profane and insulting terms, in a heavily accented version of his own language.
The only villager willing to converse was a woollen-hatted grey beard perched on a rock close to the beach, and his words were far from welcoming.
“Told the last lot of you buggers we got no more to give the king,” he grunted, glancing up from mending the fishing nets gathered in his lap.
“Took half our young ’uns for his war and the other half went off to gawp at his Great Meidvang.
Them’ve been sitting idle ever since.” He gestured to the boats on the beach.
“So just feck off or kill us, why don’t yer? ”
“We don’t come from your king,” Felnir told him. Noting how his accent brought a suspicious squint to the old man’s brow, Felnir sank to his haunches and offered a friendly smile. “But I am very keen to know where I might find him and pay my respects. For, you see, I too am a king.”