Vol.6, Ch.1, P.13
“Hah… hahh…”
The 5th headquarters. Training grounds.
Stood there was a lone figure: Raakel Nyholm, lady of the sledgehammer. Taut and athrob were her thews, and asteam was her fire-flustery skin as she hove swing after wuthering swing of her weighty weapon. Such undithering discipline was naught out of the ordinary for her. But ever since a certain incident, her drills had intensified to a terrifying degree.
Indeed, as the hammerhead howled through the air, so did its wielder dwell upon that odious day: when her dear compeer the surgien Sheila Larsen had returned to the 5th, carried upon a litter whilst bearing a bloody and bandaged stump of a dislimbed arm. Even now, Sheila’s aimless screams echoed clear in Raakel’s head—the screams of a friend defeated. Defeated in a fight that she should have won; defeated by a fool that she should have outwitted. And so was Raakel now a woman forever changed, with the fuel of “vengeance” added to the prime mover of her very soul.
Albeit this was, in truth, hardly a revenge for a cloven friend. “Well, what for, then?” one might ask her. But no answer would she give, for Raakel herself had not yet grasped the words for it. All that was certain to her was a feeling in her bosom that burnt without cease: the feeling that something, something must be put to the hammer.
“Any more and you’ll sweat yourself to a prune,” a voice said to her.
Thump!—unto the ground the hammer halted, upheaving dirt and dust. “Phew…” Raakel sighed. And standing straight, she turned about. “Ah, Gerd. Done fer the day?”
“Done?” Gerd snorted as he approached. “Scarce lifted a finger, compared to you.”
Leaning then on her hammer-haft, Raakel wiped her beady brow. And there, beneath the perspiration, smirked a face ruddy and long-lashed, delicate and unblemished—a comeliness starkly contrasting her crass conduct and untamed tongue. But very few knew this hammer-heaving vixen to have once been a fair and sheltered lady of the nobility.
“No need to whip your horse so hard, anyhow,” said Gerd. “The next job’s looking to be as dull as days-old gruel.”
That “job” concerned a certain council for reconciliation, soon to convene. The Owlcrane lieutenant put it aright: there was to be no battle there. Or so it was hoped. And as though to further grind the heel, no seat at the table was reserved for Raakel. No, she was merely to accompany Emilie to Merkulov, where the meeting was to be held. And being forbidden to pass into the parley room, it well-seemed Raakel’s fortunes were little better than Gerd’s, who was to stay here at headquarters and hold the fort. Verily, one could call it a conclave: of the 5th’s scant convoy, only Emilie was to sit at the parley, with the rest of her retinue consigned to standby elsewhere. Not that they could do aught about it, this being the stern behest of their princess sovereign Serafina.
“Oh, ye don’t know that,” returned Raakel. “Might very well see some action, Yoná willin’.”
At that, Gerd snorted. “Keep wishing.”
“Who’s wishin’?” said Raakel. “Now’days, ye scarce need to kneel with hands clasp’d to be bless’d with a bit’ o battle. Down it comes, as angels from ’bove.” Or “demons from below”, as it was usually phrased. Yet Raakel’s words betrayed nary a stutter. “Aye; I can smell it, Gerd. I really can,” she said. “Me big turn. Me time to stand astage.”
“Your turn? Astage?” Gerd echoed dubiously. “What, just because poor Sheila had hers? Come on, Raakel. You’re sounding like some comedy villain.”
Now was it Raakel’s turn to snort. “Oh? I’m the villain, now?” she practically spat out. “What’s that make him, then? The hero? Peh. Me arse.” The maiden of the maul then shook her head and smiled, her lips lifting with unthinned loathing. “…But I’ve been wond’rin’, Gerd,” she then said more quietly. “If ol’ muscle-pate were more than a match fer Cronheim… then that means I wouldn’t hold a candle to him meself, now would I?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” answered Gerd, matching her mood. “Sinews alone seldom decide a battle, you know.”
Raakel looked up to the darkling sky. “Ye recall, Gerd?” she said. “How weak he were? How useless? How he turn’d tail from it all?”
“Aye, sure.”
“An’ how he didn’t come when Emilie call’d? How he stay’d hid instead? There in that snug li’l hole o’ his?”
“…”
Gerd fell silent as he watched Raakel’s fingers clench and clench and clench away at her hammer-haft. The air betwixt them then hung heavily asudden. But before another word could be said, another new voice broke the dusking quiet.
“Ah, good Owlcranes! What cheer?” it greeted. Gerd and Raakel turned, and there found their chief adjutant Edgar, grey-speckled of hair and soft of smile. Through a cloister close by was he passing, followed by a file of a few knights. Altogether, they seemed to walk at a sloth’s pace, almost like a procession—a queerness perhaps explained by a small, delicate chest which Edgar cradled in his hands. Graven and goldly filigreed the object was, that one scarce required a thief’s eye to guess the preciousness contained therein.
“Evening, Adjutant,” Gerd returned. “What’s that you’ve got there?”
Edgar’s regard glinted. He bade his knights halt and then strolled towards the two Owlcranes, and all the while the smile on his lips transformed into a mischievous crescent. Ah, this adjutant; for a man nearing the sum of Gerd’s and Raakel’s summers, he was passingly—or even peculiarly—amiable and bright in his demeanour. “Why, the Sacrāmentum,” he answered on the way. “Yes, indeed. That one.”
Gerd blinked. “…Ah. Right,” he said. “Gentle with it, then.”
“Eh? Sack an’ rum tum? What’s that?” Raakel squawked cluelessly, earning a sigh and a shake of the head from her fellow Owlcrane.
“Weren’t paying two ears nor half a pate to Emilie, were you?” Gerd reproved her. “Provisions, Raakel. With the war upside-down as it is, the Sacrāmenta are being issued far and wide for safekeeping and battle-readiness.”
“Quite right. Even we the 5th were fortunate enough to have received a share,” Edgar put in, as he caressed the resplendent case. Therein did, indeed, sleep a mathom of an implement, a sacred spring to bestow upon a man might beyond his imagining—an artifact of unfathomable consequence. Edgar trembled; holding in hand the stuff of legends seemed to arouse him to no small degree. “Oh, I do say,” he cooed, “when first presented this by the priesthood, I was held in absolute awe.”
“…‘Awe’, ye says?” Raakel remarked. Gerd, however, yellowed at once; for he discovered the red-crowned Owlcrane’s gaze practically glued to the precious box. A foreboding bled in him.
“Oh, to be sure,” Edgar smoothly went on, seeming to note not in the least Raakel’s enchanted stare. “Dormant though it be, I can perceive still a power seeping from its every seam; that dare I say, whosoever wields this wonder may know the true meaning of ‘miracle’.”
At that glowing appraisal, Raakel gave an utter of wonder. Its tone might have sounded none too different to any other ear. But not to Gerd’s. No; as he stood there, the Owlcrane lieutenant felt a cold sweat creeping down his spine like an icy finger.
Ever a piner of power she was, Raakel, if not its unwavering worshipper. Yet of late, following the loss of their colleague’s arm and mind both, it appeared to Gerd that something… fey had found its way into those aspirations of Raakel’s. That said, it was but a sneaking suspicion; an unspoken, unwarranted wisp of a suspicion, if not an unfounded fear. After all, Raakel was a simple and sunny sort of soul, an ingénue after her own fashion. Indeed, darkness ill-beseemed her.
Or did it? At that moment, Gerd was no longer so certain. The foreboding in his bosom would not abate. Not even by a bit.
“Oh?” Edgar continued, scarce perceiving the consternation faint on Gerd’s face. “Might you feel it, as well, madame? How it exudes godsome grace? Very natural for a Sacrāmentum, albeit; but this—this is Yona’s majesty made real.”
To that, Gerd’s brows furrowed. Sure, only one who had long cultured an acquaintance with Raakel could have sensed the seeming enthrallment thickening now in her. That Edgar should fail to catch the carrot-on-a-sticking going on was therefore most reasonable. Gerd realised this, too, of course. But as her friend, he wished her to desire strength and dominance no more than she already did.
“It’s high time you ran along, Adjutant,” Gerd insisted with sternness restrained, though not wholly so. “The Crown would spit their tea to find you chatting with a trove of theirs in hand.”
Edgar blushed. “Ah! Dear me. My apologies,” he yelped. “Right. Off to the west vault with Precious here, then.”
With that, the adjutant took his leave along with his knightly retinue. And ever as he disappeared down the cloister, Raakel’s gaze followed him closely.
“…”
And quietly.
Gerd stood cold. In a corner of his mind flashed the figure of his late father. A pessimist that parent had been. Almost passingly so. And for it, he had earned little of his son’s love. But somehow and somewhere along the way, a bit of that bleak and brooding nature seemed to have rubbed off on Gerd.
Like father, like son, or so they say, he thought to himself. And then he recalled another catchphrase, that of his father’s, to wit. And in so doing, he saw again the old man’s face, muttering from behind the mists of his mind:
‘…When times are evil…
…expect evil…’
─────────────────────
Chapter 1 ─ End
♰
Comment (0)