Thus Always

A standalone fragment from the Westsong Cycle (fourth epoch)

A score of spindly equines threaded the pines like demon-stalking spirits. Each pair of sprite-ponies drew a one-man wooden chariot in its wake. Yonnc kept his head so low, his team’s wispy manes tickled his nose. He lent the critters free rein to navigate knotty trunks, patches of underbrush, and tendrils of fog.

Yonnc tugged down the brim of his helm against a stray light-beam piercing the canopy. The sun’s warmth didn’t reach him, leastways not yet. Thanks be for a thick cotton brigandine early in the morn. The Adversary was luminous, too, the scribes said.

Time suspended its usual advance in this eerie realm beneath the pines. Muted rustles and creaks betrayed the nine other river-folk riders and their teams traversing the wooded otherworld in his wake. Broad wheels and skittering hooves glided over a carpet of fallen needles and sandy soil. Yet Yonnc fancied himself alone. His mind meandered like the River Shihreh.

What a curious thing that I’ve come to be here, now, in the haunted marches of a bleeding borderland. Lost in the barbarous heart of this world, though a seven-day would bring us to the soul of civilization. How is it that the son of aurochs herders carries men’s lives on his head? These past few months, he’d overheard his fill of grousing, and then some, about well-off bumpkins playing soldier.

Snippets of birdsong echoed among the hills: thus always, thus always. A squirrel scurried up a tree.

I didn’t plan this war. I didn’t choose this fight. I didn’t seek this part I play. Nor do I flinch from my duty. The Wright decided all things that mattered, and men and women complied—if they remembered to be wise. Too often, they forgot.

An unnatural mark on the bole of the tree the squirrel had darted up roused Yonnc from his musings. He recalled his purpose here. The Frost-folk. Already?

He raised a shout, and the rangers hastened to form a hedge with their chariots. Yonnc drove his team to the center of the circle before it closed. “Ready axes!” No time for crossbows. Blue-grey ghosts already filled the gaps in the trees all around. Lo, the sun rises–and men fall. He pulled the right-hand hatchet from his belt and raised it high to greet the foe.