The Raven and the Wolf: Chapter 1 pt 2

The corridors were longer than Engle remembered, as if after hundreds of years of stability they could stretch themselves into miles during the course of a single night.  The guards escorting him could not be more than eighteen or nineteen years old and visibly scared.  He remembered their faces not their names. There were thousands like them spanning the many years he served as chief of the Lisseon army, each unique, each the same.  There was a time when he knew every face calling each man by name but that was long ago.  These boys were little more than strangers to him.  With Lisseon’s growing power and importance his expertise was called to greater duties in maintaining it.  There were now many men well qualified to run the drills for him.

They stopped at the heavy doors leading to the throne room.  The once blond wood was now black from the smoking fires of a hundred bitter winters.  At the level of his knees he saw the familiar wear spots on the doors where the wood was burnished into a perfect impression of two hands.  They were the imprints of desperate men who, in accord with a longstanding tradition, could plead their case at the doors and appeal to the king for justice and mercy.  Engle was not there to beg.  There was a chill spreading over his heart would not warmed by any fire.  The corridor was quiet except for the pounding of the boys’ hearts.  He wondered what frightened them more having succeeded at their task; or the fear he might yet escape.  He had no inclination to run. 

The stones creaked and moaned and the doors parted with a loud sigh, taking Engle’s breath and a little of his resignation.  He swallowed back any hesitation letting the weight of his prior conquests propel him forward.  With the dignity he summoned the day he first took orders, Engle crossed the distance to the throne and knelt before his king. 

He saw her.  His heart caught in his throat and for the wonder of a moment she was not the queen.  Thirty years fell away as nothing.  She was as he saw her the first day they met.  The sun piercing through steam and the soot of the bellows carving the outline of her standing over him, sweet like the first white blossoms of spring; her hair raven black and the faint blush a her cheek as he stared too long and too longingly.  There were not the threads of silver at her temples or that band of gold claiming her finger. 

It came to him in an instant and with the pain of long regret.  He knew better than to let his eyes graze her brow more than just that once.  He averted his eyes but not before catching the sharp look of Lord Ratheborne.  Engle knew that a stray glance would have lent confirmation to the despicable rumors.  Rumors that Ratheborne had skillful brought to the king’s attention.  Such a tragedy it would be if gazing upon her, devoid of guile and pure in feeling, was construed as a confession of guilt.  He lost her long ago.  She made her choice.  He did not need Ratheborne’s smug expression reminding him.

            The assembly was small.  King William deliberately excluded many members of his court from this proceeding.  No accusation was read or argument made.  Engle was sentenced without trial.  A formal inquiry might have revealed their stories for the lies they were.  Yet because of what else was at stake, it was better to leave it alone than risk further discovery.

            The punishment was read.  The words hung like a vapor in the air in the silence that followed.  Shock and disbelief forbade even the smallest intake of air as all present tried to make sense of what they heard.  Though the charges against Engle were punishable by death, King William’s judgment was banishment.  It was an unprecedented mercy.  The guards moved toward Engle but King William waved them back.

“Enough.  Return to him what is his.”

They handed Engle his sword and his dagger, their cloaks quivering.  He rose slowly, careful to keep his head low.  If King William said anything else he did not hear it.  Engle found Father Peter and looked him in the eye as he sheathed his weapons.  He let the good priest search for the sin in his face but there was no more in his heart than what was common to men.  Whatever wrongs Engle may have committed in his life, he knew for certainty that God would judge them far less wicked than the politics of such a priest.  Engle was not the first to fall victim to his agenda nor was he likely to be the last.

            Engle wondered what might have lead to this mercy, if Prince Stephen had anything to do with it.  He appealed to him during his confinement, hoping Stephen could soften his father’s anger.  Or perhaps she was the one who had awakened this surprising compassion.  William could not excuse her without excusing him?  If any credibility had been awarded those other suspicions, it would be her treason as well as his. This mercy was not for his sake but for hers.

The walk from the throne room to the gates had never been so long or so short.  He did not draw breath from the time his orders were read till he passed through the outer doors.  The gates shut behind him with an echoing finality.  

The Raven and the Wolf

Twenty years of sacrifice and service had come down to this futility.  There was no feat he could perform or argument he could make to change his fate.  Live or die the outcome was out of his hands. 

Three ravens soared above the heights of the palace walls, surveyed the surrounding hillside and returned to the tower where Engle stood.  He watched them land in perfect formation.  They turned their heads toward him for a moment, unperturbed by his gaze.  Perhaps they knew that he would not remain long.  Ravens reigned supreme as symbols of the king’s longsighted wisdom; even occupying the central figure of the Lisseon crest.  For these last twenty years they were Engle’s constant companions, bearing the word of both glad and evil tidings.  No doubt they had always known that his presence at the palace was to be one of short duration.  He did not ask and they did not say.

 “What is to be the word from my lord?” He muttered to the sky.

One of the ravens inclined its head and squawked sympathetically while the others seemed to confer upon the point. For the length of a heart beat Engle thought he saw it transform into something else entirely-a four limbed creature as black as its feathers.  But it was nothing more than a shadow cast by the dying sun.  Reason intervened and returned his heart to its regular beat.  The vision was the work of an old superstition told to him in childhood, the point of which was to keep him close to home and where his mother could see him.  The image was so deeply entrenched in his mind that the passing decades could not dislodge it entirely.

 The battlement stood at considerable height and that along with its southwest exposure was undoubtedly what first attracted the bleak creatures. When the castle was first completed the king occupied the chamber directly below.  One night he emerged declaring he must quit the chamber because of the birds’ incessant noise. Attempts to drive them off were futile.  So the king moved his residence in the east tower and leaving the west tower empty for many decades.  It became of archive of forgotten writings and discarded, obsolete weaponry. 

After ten years of living with the sounds aboard a ship such their squawks proved no hardship to Engle.  He had often stayed in the chamber below and thought nothing of his father’s stories.  The raven’s tolerated his presence well enough and acknowledged him as much or as little as any other of their kin.  Engle came to refer to them as his advisors, a comment that may have influenced a rumor that he was fluent in the ancient practice of raven speak. Whether they spoke to him or not he respected they were privy to far more of what was happening than they deigned to reveal.

The sun slipped down touching the distant waters and turning them into a sea of molten gold.  He shielded his eyes against the glare.  It was nearly a hundred miles to the shores of Ogalon and those waters he sailed a lifetime ago.  Behind him, were the forests of Duessa, land of his father but the sea had always been Engle’s true home.  North of the castle stood the great white peaks of the Lisseon Mountains, its glaciers tinted purple in the dying light.  If this was to be his last view in life, it was a remarkable one.

Before the last rays faded beyond the horizon, two guards came to escort him to the throne room.  The wonderment was gone and his body ached.  In his lifetime he had witnessed compassion and cruelty in equal measure.  His body was the proof of it.  In his hands and on his arms were scars of every kind. The violence of each injury told in the width of the scar and its coloration. Thin white lines were trifles easily forgotten.  Wide slashes stretched in purple and red were the things he wished he could forget.  The tapestry spread across his torso, where there were one or two marks that still gave him pain.  If he survived the coming judgment what sort of scars would take up his story?