Page 24 of Swordheart #1

Despite Sarkis’s misgivings, the walk to Archon’s Glory was a much easier one than the long road to Amalcross.

The roads were full of drovers, pilgrims, merchants, and other travelers on foot.

A trio of priests wearing the indigo cloaks of the Hanged Mother rode by.

Halla could feel Sarkis stiffen beside her.

“Don’t attract attention,” she murmured.

The Motherhood had only passed through Rutger’s Howe a handful of times, but Halla knew enough to stay out of their way.

The last time, they had reduced the hostelkeeper’s wife to tears with their sharp questions, and the general feeling was that she had gotten off lightly.

In a battle of wills between the Hanged Mother’s priests and the constables, no one believed that the constables would be able to keep the Motherhood from burning anyone they felt like burning.

Sarkis grumbled, pulling his cloak around his shoulders and slouching. As a disguise went, Halla had seen much better. There was simply no mistaking Sarkis for anything but a warrior, no matter what he was wearing.

Ah, well. People will probably be too busy staring at the frumpy woman with the big sword on her back to even notice him.

No one gave them any trouble. The inn that night was very full and both of them ended up sleeping in the stables alongside a dozen other travelers, which was at least warm, if not particularly private.

Sarkis glared at anyone who came close to their spread cloaks.

Halla just tried not to die from being poked to death by little jabby bits of straw.

The walls of the city were coming into view the next morning when Sarkis froze. “What is that?”

Halla followed his gaze. There was a wall, a few people, a gnole on some business of its own… “What’s what?”

“The striped creature.”

“Oh! That’s a gnole.”

“What is a gnole?”

“Errr…” Halla wasn’t sure how to explain.

Gnoles were small, badger-like creatures that favored brightly colored clothing and did odd jobs in cities.

They had shown up in Anuket City and environs about fifteen years ago, and hardly anyone noticed them anymore.

There was even a small burrow of them in Rutger’s Howe.

Humans treated them with a sort of good-natured contempt, and the gnoles returned the favor.

“Well, they look like that… they’re nice enough.

I mean, they’re usually very polite. They show up and do work and keep things clean. ”

“Are they dangerous?”

This was a complicated question. Halla had to think about it. “Are humans dangerous?”

“Very.”

“Then probably, yes. But I’ve never heard of a gnole attacking anybody.

Or, I mean, I’ve heard of it, but usually from really drunk people who were probably attacked by their own feet, if you know what I mean, and tried to pin it on a gnole.

They don’t bother anybody and they leave the world cleaner than it was, so most people don’t have a problem with them. ”

Sarkis looked unconvinced. “We do not have them in the Weeping Lands.”

Halla privately thought they didn’t have a lot of things in the Weeping Lands, but it didn’t seem diplomatic to say so.

“They migrated in years ago. We didn’t see them in the outlying towns much, but they were already in Archenhold by the time I moved here.

” She considered for a bit. “Errr… have you not met nonhuman people before?”

“A few. The Thinnang—the rabbit folk—have a dwelling in the Weeping Lands. And one encounters a minotaur from time to time near the sea, of course.” He shrugged. “There are always stories of shapechangers and forest-folk, but I don’t know how many are true.”

“There’s rune in the Vagrant Hills,” said Halla. “At least there’s supposed to be. I’ve never seen one. Mostly, though, there’s gnoles.”

The gnole in question was long gone. The crowd had begun to grow thicker as they approached Archon’s Glory.

“A defensible city,” said Sarkis, eyeing Archon’s Glory with approval. “At least the core. The rest would be burned during a siege, of course.”

“Well, Archenhold’s right on Anuket’s doorstep,” said Halla, shrugging.

“They have to maintain their independence or they’d get swallowed up.

So they keep the city walls maintained and their standing army is no joke.

Young men from Rutger’s Howe would go join up if they wanted to impress young women. ”

“Did it?”

“Did it what?”

“Impress the young women.”

“I’m not sure. It didn’t impress me, anyway, when I was young.”

Sarkis actually laughed. Halla had grown to appreciate his laughter all the more for its rarity. “Wise girl. In the steading, they said the foolish girls sighed after warriors, but the smart ones married the farmers.”

“The steading?”

“Where I grew up.”

“In the Weeping Lands?”

“Yes.”

“What was it like?”

He appeared to consider this at some length, as they approached the outer city of Archon’s Glory. Brightly colored banners hung over the streets, flapping in the wind. The houses were no more than two stories high, which gave the outer city an oddly truncated appearance.

“It was… empty,” he said finally.

Halla looked at him, puzzled. “What was?”

“The steading.”

“Oh! Err… why was it empty?”

“All of the Weeping Lands is empty. The wind howls over the grass and you think you can see for a thousand miles. But you can’t. There are folds and hills and clefts in the earth. It is rotten with holes and old places.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Very much.”

Halla frowned, reaching behind her head to touch the hilt of the sword. “Do you need to go back? I mean, if you’re homesick, you should definitely—”

“I am not homesick.”

“Oh.”

The road they were on split into a dozen streets. Despite the earliness of the hour, stalls were already being set up along the streets and women carrying full water jugs streamed past.

“I’d be homesick,” said Halla.

“That does not surprise me.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to go back?”

Sarkis stopped so abruptly that Halla continued a pace or two past him before she realized he’d stopped. “Are you asking me to leave your service, lady?”

“What? No! I mean, if you want to go, I’d miss you, but…”

He raised an eyebrow. “You’d miss me.”

It didn’t sound like a question, but Halla plowed ahead anyway. “Yes! I mean, you’re very… uh… there.” She waved her hands in the general outline of his body. “Very there. I’d notice if you weren’t there.”

They paused in a large stone courtyard with a well. A pump stood to one side, with a tin cup on a chain beside it. Sarkis filled the cup and handed it to Halla before drinking himself.

“I will not go back to the Weeping Lands,” he said. “As long as I do not, then in my heart, they are all still there, still alive, unchanged. If I return, I will see what hundreds of years have wrought, and my heart will know that they are dead.”

Halla stared at him, her mouth open.

“I find that I would rather be an exile in my heart than the last survivor. Now where is your temple to your very sensible rat god?”

Halla pointed, then led the way when he fell into his accustomed guard position. She hardly knew what to say.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally.

She expected him to grunt, but he said, “As am I,” and that was all that needed to be said.