Once more into the breach, dear friends! Welcome to chapter fourteen of Silvanus and Empire. Last chapter we got a Caddoc-eye-view of Lyrinn's reunification with her mother; today we're going back across the river where something's rotten in the town of Annex. Read on, dear readers, and enjoy!
Silvanus and Empire
Chapter Fourteen
image from Vintage Ephemera
Oren folded over the piece of parchment carefully. He then picked up the burning candle on his writing desk and let hot wax drip down on the center of the open edge before pressing his little wooden seal into it. The sigil of the Imperial Scribners stared back at him.
“There,” he said, handing it wearily to the man standing next to him. “It is done. Here you are, Master Farmer; the fate of Annex – nay, the safety of every Imperial settler in this river valley – may very well rest in your hands now. You and Master Smith must not fail in your task.”
Bryn nodded, swallowing audibly. He looked a bit pale. “We’ll be leavin’ right away, Scribe Oren. Dafydd has already packed up old Malcolm. Are ye sure y’want us takin’ him? He was…. Well him bein’ Caddoc’s, and all.”
“Yes, I’m sure, Master Farmer.” Oren rose to his feet and stretched. He winced as his back crackled audibly. “While I’d like nothing more than to have his mule waiting for my young apprentice’s return, we both know it is simply not likely. Not if he’s been taken by the Bloodhairs.” He placed his hand on Bryn’s shoulder. “I am sure his heart would be glad to know that Malcolm had somehow contributed to safeguarding the good people of this valley.” He patted Bryn’s shoulder before turning around to stare out the open back window. “It wasn’t always this way, you know. There was a time, nearly twenty winters gone now it must be, where I thought for a brief moment we could make peace with the Wild Folk of Silvanus.”
Bryn shifted. “How so, Scribe Oren? I thought the Bloodhairs have always been—“
“Godless heathens?” Oren turned back around and leaned up against his writing desk “Yes, but even then there were some that would rather have had peace between themselves and us. Did you know there were even some that lived on this side of the river?”
Bryn gave Oren a skeptical look. “That can’t be true. I’ve never even heard of such a thing!”
“Oh, there aren’t many around who care to have it remembered. Twenty winters is a long time after all, and when a generation doesn’t tell their stories to their children, some – if not all – of the history of a time can just disappear. This is what we did, all of us, after the terrible things that happened all those winters ago. You wouldn’t remember it - you were barely two or three winters old at the time, Master Farmer - but the Empire had nearly made peace with the Silvani.”
Bryn leaned up against a nearby bookshelf and crossed his arms. “What happened, Scribe Oren? Why isn’t there peace now between the Bloodhairs and us?”
Oren took a deep breath. “I don’t like talking about it much, Master Farmer, but I suppose I can relate the tale for a bit. You remember how I told you there were Silvani living among us?” Bryn nodded. “Just one or two families, but still, they were large ones. They had turned aside from their people’s barbarous ways and had in fact begun farming small patches of land on this side of the river. It was through them that our greatest hope for peace was first raised; it was also through them that the worst horrors I have ever seen in my life came to pass.”
Oren shook his head. “We talked with the families on this side of the river, and they in turn went and talked to their old tribes on the far side, and in turn their great tribe chiefs came across to Annex to meet. The fighting had gone on too long between our two peoples, they said. It was a high time that we should invest in the peace and safety of the younger generation. So an emissary was sent to Imperial Center, and one of His Holiness’ Imperial Ambassadors was dispatched to our little town here.
“The rest was terrible. As a Scribe I was to go across the river with the Imperial ambassador’s entourage – so as to witness the exact moment of the peace accord and record it for posterity. We were to be witnessing history! But it was all a lie.”
“A lie?” Bryn looked riveted. “What do you mean? Scribe Oren, what happened after that?”
Oren sighed. “We were ambushed. We – and the Wildfolk who had allied themselves with us – were suddenly beset upon by arrows from every direction. The woods rang with the sound of thrumming bowstrings, pulled by treacherous fingers. They shot at their own people, Master Farmer! Can you imagine? Mowing down your own people, just to strike a blow to a hated enemy? What monsters would waste the lives of their own like that?”
“My pa always used t’say you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, Scribe Oren.”
“Plenty of eggs broke that day.” Oren sank into the old rickety chair that accompanied his writing desk. “Barely any of us got away with our lives. Of course, as soon as the survivors got back to town, what do you think was the first thing we did?”
Bryn’s brow furrowed. “Take it out on the tame Bloodhairs livin’ in town?”
Oren tapped the side of his nose. “Exactly. There was such a general outcry that an entire farmhouse was put to the torch. One whole family was burned alive. The other family tried to get away, and they almost did.”
“Almost?”
The older man nodded. “They were a young couple, only one child – a newborn, really – and they had tried to slip out of Annex while the first house burnt down to the ground. I knew them well… you could even say that I was their friend. But that couldn’t save them in the end.”
“So they were hunted down and killed?”
“Yes, they were – all but the young child. You see, one of the Imperial Guardsmen had survived the ambush with me – in fact, had dragged me back to the Annex half-dead – and was ultimately the reason the child survived. He was a strong young lad, a caravan guard that had been up and down this valley already on several trips in his career, and he too was a friend of the Wildfolk family. He was with them, helping them to escape, and when the mob caught up with them he stood and said that any man who wished to harm his friends would have to go through him first.”
Oren smiled sadly at the memory. “He was a good man,” he said. “Foolhardy, and hotheaded, but a good man nonetheless. And he too was my friend.” The smile on the old man’s face faded. “He finally succumbed to the myriad of wounds he received while defending his charges, but not before they had placed the child in his arms and implored him to run, to not let their beloved daughter die. He did so, and after the mob was done with the parents, they came for the child. My friend fell, bloody and broken, clutching the infant against his chest. It was only then that the mob came to their senses, looking down at his destroyed body, still cradling the mewling little girl in his lifeless arms.”
“So… so that’s how Lyrinn…?”
“Yes.” Oren nodded. “In atonement for the terrible sins we’d all committed against the innocent Silvani living on our side of the river, we took Lyrinn in and agreed to never tell her of her parents.”
“But Scribe Oren, everyone knows no’wt in town hates Lyrinn more than you do. How can this all be true?”
Oren was quiet for several moments. “I do hate her more than anyone in town,” Oren said finally. “When I look at her, I see my dead friends reflected in her eyes.” He sighed, and leaned back in his chair. “I am old, Master Farmer; I may not live to see many more winters. But if you want to see another yourself, you’ll leave this doddering fool alone with his memories and set off to the west.”
Bryn looked at Oren quietly for a moment, nodded, and stuffed the letter the older man had handed him into his tunic. “Thank you, Scribe Oren,” he said. “I’ll be off now.” The scribe waved him off.
Bryn stepped out into the midday heat. The fog had burned off that morning, leaving the little settlement of Annex sunny and bright, but also with the look of a ghost town – fields lay unworked, the forge was silent, and there were no children underfoot as there usually were.
This place is ripe for the plucking, Bryn thought with a smirk. He ducked along the side of the old barn and pressed up against the silo. He then looked around carefully.
The river was to his right, and devoid of all human life of course. To his left, past the barn, the Cliffway stretched in bright stone ribbons east and west across the land. It was abandoned as far as Bryn could see.
With a nod, Bryn leaned back against the barn and closed his eyes. Now, none on the Imperial side of the river saw what happened next, but if someone had, they would have undoubtedly been horrorstruck: Bryn’s features began to slide and shift about his face. His cheeks became fuller and more rounded, his hair thinned and went grey, and even his clothes changed as well; in place of the traveling clothes of a peasant, they slowly distended and warped until they became the well-worn robes of an Imperial official. Some ink stains appeared on the sleeves.
Finally, where Bryn had been standing just moments before was someone that now looked exactly like Oren. The man gazed down at himself and smirked again before pulling out the letter that the real Oren had written. “No need for this, “ he said (in Oren’s voice), and the letter combusted in a puff of acrid smoke. He pulled out an identically-sealed letter and strode purposefully out on to the Cliffway, staring down it towards the west.
After a moment, the false Oren stopped and watched Bryn – the real Bryn – come slowly trudging around a bend on his way to the barn. He looked up and saw Oren, waiting quietly for him in the middle of the road.
The false Oren waved. “Come here, Master Farmer,” he cried. “I have something to give you.”
None on the south shore of the river saw Oren – who had just moments before been Bryn – as he ducked behind the barn again. None saw him change again, this time into a stately middle-aged woman with a shock of bright red hair shot through with grey, dressed in simple but spotless deerskins. None on the south shore saw her smirk cruelly before disappearing in a cloud of dark, saffron-colored smoke that dissipated in the wind.
None on the south side of the river saw any of this, no – but one pair of eyes, keen as a raptor’s, had been watching from the Silvani’s side. And they had seen more than enough for one day. Sight-of-Eagles melted into the forest and began hurriedly making his way back to his father’s encampment.