Sci Fi & Fantasy / Son's Vengeance-Chapter Two
Atironen slept well into the afternoon the day following the Feast of Stars. He lazed in his bed, far too comfortable to move, listening to the birds’ songs that drifted in through his slit of a window. After some time, however, he rose and dressed, bored with simply lying in bed.
“Well, look who finally decided to honor us with his company,” Atelaya said as soon as he came to the practice courts. Arototas and his uncle fought off to the side.
“Good morning, Atelaya,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“Afternoon, more like. Honestly, Atironen! Just because you won the race doesn’t mean you’re entitled to lounge about for the rest of your life while the rest of us work. In case it escaped your notice, we’re preparing for a war. It wouldn’t hurt for you to do something of use once in a while.”
“Sorry. I lost track of time,” he said. Atelaya scoffed, but he ignored her. “Care to fight?”
Atelaya said nothing in response, but picked up a wooden practice sword and moved to a separate court from where Arototas and her father fought. Atironen took a sword from one of the tables and moved opposite her, readying himself. She took a step to her right, which he countered with one to his. He knew from past fights that she was far better than her brother and already he detected familiar signs of it. Her face was utterly expressionless and her joints more relaxed.
Atironen struck first, slashing at her right hand, but she blocked the blow with incredible deftness. She retaliated, striking faster and faster while he stepped back, unable to parry quickly enough. He spun around to her side, avoiding her sorcerer’s glove, in an attempt to breach her defense, but she countered, unhindered. There was a slight twinkle in her eye, a glittering laugh, as she struck again and again. Atironen bristled at it. He would not be laughed at. His fury began to rise and he moved faster, striking harder. In a brown blur of wood, Atelaya knocked his sword from his hands, the tip of hers coming to his heart.
“Dead,” she said. “Remember what I said about passion, cousin. Does it really help you?”
Atironen felt his face draw into a scowl as he slammed the wooden sword onto the table. Atelaya laughed aloud.
“Passion, Atironen!” she called to him. With a wicked chuckle, she turned and walked down the hall, tossing a single golden spark between the fingers of her sorcerer’s glove.
Atironen leaned against the table, watching her through narrowed eyes until she was out of his sight. He fumed silently for a moment, running through her words again in his mind, feeling each one sting anew. Atelaya had never been particularly friendly to him, but she’d never been this vicious. He recalled her comment about his father; he’d never known her to say things like that before.
To his right, Arototas and his uncle finished their fight, neither having won. They approached him, slightly breathless, and he straightened up, turning to face them.
“It’s about time you woke up,” Arototas said. Atironen could see in his face that he was still upset about the race.
“I’m sorry. I overslept,” Atironen said.
“I’ll say you did! It’ll be time for dinner soon, you know.”
“Yes, I know, Arototas.”
“Is everything all right, nephew?” his uncle asked. Atironen merely shrugged. “Why don’t the two of you practice a bit, hmm?”
The king patted them both on the shoulder, then followed the hall away from the practice courts.
“I don’t feel much like practicing,” Arototas said.
“Neither do I. We could go for a ride,” Atironen said with a smile. Arototas glared at him.
“Library,” Arototas said, turning down one of the halls. Atironen followed, chuckling to himself and quickening his step to come astride his cousin.
“Arototas,” he said. “I’ll race you there.”
Arototas stopped in his tracks, eyes aflame. Atironen laughed, unable to contain his amusement, and Arototas lunged at him, knocking him against the stone wall behind. Atironen shoved him back, wrapping his arm around his neck and forcing him to the ground. Arototas kicked and squirmed, striking Atironen in the back and wriggling free. They scuffled on the floor, both on their knees, for a few moments, each smiling amidst punches. In the end, Arototas pinned Atironen to the ground, his sorcerer’s glove crackling victoriously.
“Uh, pardon me, my lords,” a servant said, standing before them. Her arms were crossed sheepishly.
“Yes?” Arototas said. The two of them stood and dusted themselves off, turning to hear her.
“My lords, the king requests that both of you come to the throne room immediately. He says it’s most urgent,” the servant said.
“What’s it about?” Arototas asked, the smile gone from his face.
“He didn’t say, my lords, only that you should come straight away.”
With a curtsy, she left them, going down a hall to their right. Atironen and Arototas hurried to the throne room, neither caring which one of them arrived first.
The throne room was possibly the largest room in the castle, after the Great Hall, with wide, marble walls and a high ceiling and a dais against the back wall where the thrones stood. The queen sat in her throne, but the king was below on the floor, consulting with various military personages and councilors. Atelaya rested with her back against the wall on the dais beside her mother.
Atironen and Arototas rushed in, hardly acknowledged by anyone, and to the king, who merely nodded at them.
“You sent for us, Father?” Arototas asked.
The king said nothing to them, but continued in his conversation with an elderly man missing an arm Atironen knew to be the general of the Rhabrynese army. Atelaya approached them, rolling her eyes, and dragged Arototas away with Atironen following behind.
“What is it?” Arototas asked.
“We’ve just received word that Palenyon is marching on Essiels,” she said, clearly impatient with them.
“How soon will they be here?” Atironen asked.
“Two weeks at the most. They somehow made it past the border without our knowing, not to mention through most of the southern countryside.”
“So are we going to prepare the city for a siege?”
“No, we’re marching as soon as possible to keep them from ever getting here. We can’t risk a siege.”
“But don’t we have an advantage over Palenyon?”
“What type of advantage do you mean?” Atelaya asked, her demeanor somewhat suspicious.
“I don’t know. I heard you talking to my uncle about it during the Feast of Candles,” Atironen said.
“We have many advantages over Palenyon,” she said simply, then left them to stand beside her father.
Practically the entire castle, and indeed, the city, was in a frenzy trying to prepare. The military officers assembled their troops in rows of tents just outside the city walls, each man exercising and practicing for the battle ahead. Atironen escaped most of the chaos; he was high enough to avoid menial chores, but low enough to escape major decisions. Both of his cousins, however, were almost always needed for something. While they followed the king, Atironen spent most of his time at the practice courts fighting the sons of various lords he was only just acquainted with.
For two days, the army gathered and the officers prepared. They were to march south on the third until they came to an open field a safe distance from the city. There they would wait for the army of Palenyon to bring the battle.
Atironen followed on his horse behind Arototas. Atelaya rode before her brother, just behind the king. All the nobles rode after, three abreast in order to make it through the castle gates. The sky was a light shade of pink toward the east, though night was still evident in the west. A few birds sang softly, but other than those, the only sounds were the horses’ hooves. They passed through the city gates, coming to the plains that surrounded Essiels where the army waited. The tents the soldiers had stayed in the past few days were gone, packed up by their owners, and were replaced by rows of men of the infantry, cavalry, and archers, armed and ready for the march. The officers shouted orders and, collectively, they moved, following after their king.
The sun struck harder and harder upon them as the day lengthened. By noon, Atironen could still see the faint outline of Essiels on the northern horizon and nothing ahead, except a few dark shapes he thought to be trees. They’d come a few miles already, no more than four or five, but kept going, still not far enough from the city. Atironen ached, more from boredom and weariness than from his saddle, but he pushed his discomfort to the back of his mind. Letting his pain rule him was just as bad as letting his passion.
They stopped some time after nightfall. Only the plains surrounded them, with light winds whipping the grass over the hills where they camped. Atironen had given up looking for anything of interest around them and instead watched Arototas and Atelaya as they dueled with sorcery.
Unlike sword fighting, the two competitors in a sorcerer’s duel kept a considerable amount of distance between them, several feet at least, and stood far more stationary, moving only closer and farther from one another instead of in circles. They used only one hand, the gloved hand, and kept it in front of their heart when they didn’t attack. Most sorcerers wore their gloves on their right hands and used their sword with their left, like Atelaya and her father, but Arototas was left-handed.
Atelaya attacked first, sending a flurry of sparks forth from her hand toward her brother. He held out his glove to catch them, then sent a flame back to her. She extinguished it in a puff of smoke with her glove, then retaliated with a flame of her own. They continued like this, each attacking in turn, for some time. The purpose of it was merely to practice their conjuring, as Atironen knew, since their chances of meeting an enemy sorcerer on the battlefield were slim.
Atironen returned to his tent before his cousins had finished their duel. As he ducked beneath the door flap, the stars up above caught his eye. They were clearer than in Essiels, and far more numerous. He tried to find some of the constellations he’d been taught in school. There was Ettar the Serpent, he thought at first, then realized he was mistaken. He’d never been very gifted at astronomy.
The next day’s march began at dawn. They plodded along through the plains, each footfall thudding into the grass. The slow pace wearied Atironen far more than any quick sprint. They seemed to go nowhere. Every hill they passed, every tree, disappeared behind them only to show up again ahead. Atironen wondered how they managed to cover any distance at all, but his uncle told him they’d gone some twenty miles from the city by the time they stopped that night. He didn’t watch Arototas and Atelaya as he had the night before, but instead retired immediately to his tent and slept.
Shouts from outside woke Atironen just after dawn. He bolted upright, reaching for his sword, then waited and listened. Several men shouted for the king, others for the officers, while some called out in confusion. Atironen ducked his head out through the door flap; scouts ran through the rows of tents in a frenzy, while many of the soldiers, like Atironen, looked out to see what was happening.
“You there!” he called to a passing scout. He stopped and turned to him.
“Yes, my lord?”
“What’s going on?”
“We’ve spotted Palenyon, sir,” the scout said, then ran off.
Atironen, in a blur of cloth and metal, dressed and threw on his coat of chain mail. With his sword belted at his side, he stooped out of his tent and dashed to Arototas’s, pounding on the door flap. He waited for a moment, then pounded again, faster and harder. Already he felt anxiety building in his muscles.
“Arototas!” he said, pressing his ear to the tent to listen for sounds of movement.
“What?” Arototas said, peering out through the door flap.
“We’ve spotted Palenyon,” he said.
Arototas disappeared, then emerged a moment later, buckling his sword belt around his waist. Together, they ran to the king’s tent and found the door flap open, scouts already inside making their report. They ducked inside and took their place beside the king, turning their attention to the scouts.
“How many?” the king asked. The foremost scout, a dark-skinned man with tousled hair, stood panting before him.
“Some thousands, sir. They were still too far away for us to see exactly how many, but there were many,” the scout said.
“About how far?” The king glanced over as Atelaya rushed in, tying her long hair away from her face.
“We saw them from the top of the hill, so there are still some miles between us, but they move quickly and they should be here by midday,” the scout said.
“Assemble the officers and rouse the troops. Appoint more sentries to watch their position and have them report to me about anything unusual, do you understand? Anything,” the king said, and the scout bowed, then dashed away. The king turned to Atironen, Arototas, and Atelaya. “I suggest the three of you prepare for battle.”
Once he had returned to his tent, Atironen began strapping on his armor. He rarely wore it and its weight felt unfamiliar, even uncomfortable, to him. Over his armor he wore his golden surcoat, emblazed with the brown gryphon of Rhabryn and bearing a patch denoting his rank.
Within two hours’ time, the entire Rhabrynese army was armed and ready to march. Each soldier wore full armor and carried weapons according to their division; those in the infantry had broadswords and short pikes, the cavalry had long swords and long-hafted spears, and the archers had their bows and quivers stuffed full of arrows.
They marched quicker now, relieved of the extra weight of their tents and other supplies that they had left at their camp. Atironen glanced at the legions of soldiers following behind him and his uncle. Only the officers spoke, calling out in time with the beat of a drum, while the common men looked straight forward in the direction of their king. He wondered what they thought of as they marched. Perhaps some of them, like him, had lost fathers in battle. Perhaps they fought for the same reason he did.
You need to log in to urbis or create an urbis account to review this writing.
Reviews
Sort Reviews by Newest | Oldest | Highest Quality | Lowest Quality | Newest Comments |
Overall this was a good chapter. This is getting more exciting. It could use a little more description at times. There were just a few minor things…
“the day following the Feast of Stars.” You don’t need to tell us this, unless you specifiy otherwise we’ll assume it’s the next day.
“throne room was possibly the largest room” Either is was the largest or it’s not. Take out possibly
“Practically the entire castle, and” Eliminate every adverb you can. It will make your writing stronger.
“since their chances of meeting an enemy sorcerer on the battlefield were slim.” Why were their chances slim?
- add/view comments (0)
Showing 1 - 1 of 1
Review item
Add to faves
GENERAL
REVIEW QUEUE
Ratings & Rankings
