Blade of Erogrund

“Would you desist?” Matthias grumbled.

Godric stopped in his tracks, which were now well worn in the patches of grass beneath the small grove where they remained encamped. It had been quite some time since he had stopped counting his steps - somewhere in the thousands.

Hilthwen scarcely fared better. She sat with unnatural stillness atop one of the dull grey boulders that shown in the breaking morning light, her eyes scanning the base of the cliffs unceasingly.

“Give him a break, Matthias,” she murmured dishearteningly.

The boy stood from where he had sat beside the dozing frame of Ephraun whose only slightly flushed face revealed his lessening fever.

“I’ll give him a break, alright,” Matthias responded, flashing a sly, somewhat humorous grin to Godric. “By putting his legs over my knee if they take another pace.”

Turning back to the grey, unwavering scene of the cliffs, Hilthwen offered a small smile at the idle threat. “They should have come by now; it’s the second morning. Something’s wrong.”

“They still have some time,” Godric answered without conviction. “Give it a little longer”

The sun willingly climbed the dark sky as the day progressed, generously measuring the time that betrayed the hope of the companions. Its rays succeeded in warming the otherwise frigid morning but staunchly refused to display they so hopefully watched for - to see riders coming from the cliff-gates of Biren-Larath. Even as the sun rose the wind died, which, after its continual howling, left an agonizing air to the hillside as though the very landscape was holding its breath. Left bent by the gales that had swept the hill, the dull brown trees, thorny bushes, and even stalks of faded green grass all leaned toward the still cliff in expectation of the emergence of a messenger that neglected to appear.

When the sun had reached even as high as its noonday throne in the sky, the companions relented their watch only so long as to get rations from the now weary horses and enjoy them as best they could in the small grove of stone and trees.

Matthias distributed the rations carefully and passed around the canteen, shaking his head.

“There isn’t much left here. We were supposed to be relieved by the rest of the patrol or at the very least beckoned back.”

Ephraun struggled to lift himself up to a sitting position against one of the slate-grey boulders. “You only packed enough for a day?”

“Two,” Hilthwen corrected with an edge of resentment, “but we weren’t expecting to have to try and fight a fever, make an herb mixture, or share it with an injured fourth man.”

“My apologies,” the soldier admitted after lifting the jug to his lips.

“Keep them,” Godric muttered. “We need a plan.”

Matthias raised an eyebrow. “You took the words right out of my mouth.” The boy crossed his arms and leaned back from where he sat, letting the shadow of a nearby tree veil his brow. “But we don’t have many options. Either we stay, we go, or we attempt to enter the city.”

“Which could be suicide,” Hilthwen countered. “We still don’t know if Caeros or Ennor rules the floor inside those gates. Niron,” she said, tossing her hands, “for all we know they are both done away with and someone else sits on the throne.”

“It could be that the fighting isn’t over yet either,” Godric added, his fingers absently rubbing the hilt of the sword that adorned his hip. “If Caeros had enough men with him he very well might have taken part of the city and is holding out.”

Ephraun wiped his brow. ”Dragonfire... Caeros was one sharp thorn, but I never took him as a traitor.”

“Regardless,” Matthias continued, “it sounds like our best options are either staying or leaving.”

Godric nearly asked where it would be that they were to be leaving for when Ephraun’s words drowned out the start of his question.

“Let me limit those choices for you. To stay here is foolishness and to leave is idiocy. Going back to Westir without alerting anyone within the city,” he gestured toward the cliff, “is as good as a death sentence to the few lads that are holding out, not to mention ourselves. But to stay here in the open may be even more unwise.”

“There had better be a suggestion coming,” Hilthwen muttered, “or those wounds on your chest may find themselves ‘less healed.’”

He shot her a wary glance and absentmindedly touched the bandages that clad his chest with his fingertips. “There is. Some five miles from here there’s a grove called Vheor. It’s scarcely larger than this one but offers far more cover and a creek runs not far from it.”

Matthias, Hilthwen, and Godric shared a glance.

“Sounds better than this,” Godric finally replied.

Hilthwen cocked her head. “I’m not so sure. If we venture that far away it is sure that any messenger would not be able to find us.”

“But,” Matthias said, completing the thought, “it would mean relative protection. At least until you,” he gestured to Ephraun, “recovered. We could refill the water supply and return.”

A gentle breeze displaced the narrow, leaf-laden branch of a tree to let a ray of sun shine on Hilthwen’s unconvinced face. “I don’t know. It feels too much like giving up to me. What if they come later? Or what if Ennor forgot?”

“Then we can always come back,” Godric answered. For all the other boy had said about him, Matthias’s plan sounded logical, at least compared to the alternatives. Perhaps it was the newfound drop of confidence he felt after the encounter with Ephraun the previous night or the subtle voice that had whispered in his conscience since his dreams, urging action. Either way he was convinced that to sit idly was the wrong move.

The girl shook her head. ”Madrisoc,” she muttered in a tongue unfamiliar to Godric. “Alright. But wait until tonight at the least?”

Ephraun nodded his consent to this. “That would be wisest anyway; the Hatchlings might see us in the daylight.”

“Then it’s decided,” Matthias said. “We set out at dusk.”

Somehow the promise of action proved even more frustrating than the absence of it. Godric found himself perpetually fighting the urge to stand back up and pace, to draw his sword and re-check its razor edge, or examine the saddlebags and repack them. The sun was painfully slow at reminding them how much time had transpired until he became certain that some unseen hand was holding it in place in the sky if for no other reason than to torment them. The wind remained pent up in the lungs of the hills leaving an anxiety-stricken landscape.

Once the dull, strangely brutal realization that he had no other choice but to wait set in, Godric found himself almost preoccupied with observing his companions. Judging by their peculiar mannerisms they felt similarly but each expressed it in a singular way.

Ephraun appeared almost content with the situation. He half sat, half reclined on the ground with his back leaning against a mighty boulder. If it wasn’t for the way his heavily lidded eyes would drift close before snapping open in a frantic frenzy every several moments, Godric would have been convinced he was almost peaceful.

As for Hilthwen, she consistently transitioned from passionately checking and re-checking the supplies, saddlebags, and horses to sitting utterly still. When she moved it was in a disjointed frenzy, completely unlike any preceding behavior Godric had seen of her. The calm, collected hunter had been replaced by a self-conscious girl shaken by the unknown until she sat. Then her hands would cross over her lap in and her eyes would search the scene for a break in the monotony that could not be found.

Quite unexpectedly Matthias appeared to be the least effected by the lull. He stood like a stone column in the shade of the scraggly trees a short distance from Godric, leaning against his spear like a weary journeyman might his staff. In one hand he tossed a small pebble. Every now and again he would shoot a perhaps amused glance at Hilthwen, but he made no attempts to stop or console her.

When he had grown bored from supervising his companions, Godric stepped near Matthias and offered a nod.

“Hey.”

The other boy raised an eyebrow. “Hello.”

Silence.

Matthias cleared his throat. “Is there anything in particular you would like to say? Or was your sole purpose in initiating this conversation to make an awkward situation more so?”

The quip rang with an undeniably Dwarven attitude. “You sound perhaps a little too much like Thain.”

The other cracked a smile. “He’s a strange fellow, that one. I can’t say I’ve met him all that often, but from what I saw at the banquet I’ll take that as a compliment.”

A sad thought traced its way through Godric’s mind like the tendrils of shadow coming off the trees in the dozing sunlight. “Do you suppose we’ll see them again soon?”

"Ecthion, Godric, don’t you get bloody sentimental with me. We’re scarcely a mile from the city.”

“And yet,” Godric said with a sinking feeling, “farther than we’ll ever be.”

Matthias let the pebble fall into his hand but didn’t venture to toss it again. His eyes searched Godric for a moment before returning to the hills. “Doesn’t matter to me much anyway. My stake isn’t in that city of standing rubble.”

Coming from almost anyone else this might have been a strange sentiment, but the statement only affirmed what Godric had begun to notice about the weathered, battle-hardened boy that stood beside him. With every hour a strange new side of the warrior showed itself like a crystal with so many faces that you could scarcely recognize what shape it was.

“Where then does your stake lie?”

Hooded in the shadows of the afternoon Matthias turned his gaze to Godric’s inquiring face. A look crossed his countenance until he evidently made his decision.

“Not here,” was his only reply.

He shrugged his cloak more securely on his shoulders and turned to look at the fading light in the sky.

“I’d say it’s time we set out.”

The last rays of the dying sun tossed a dense blanket of darkness over the broken hills and forest woven by the strands of shadow that dripped from every branch and boulder. The tapestry of darkness gladly welcomed their silent caravan down the hill under the cover of the treetops that stood like obsidian columns in the black of night. Every footstep of the horses fell upon the ground like a thunderclap in the dead silence but they refused to be muffled against the leaves and twigs that littered the ground.

With a sense of the stiff cold around them and the insurmountable silence that plagued the depths of dusk Godric became keenly aware of something on the back of his mind. Sitting behind Matthias, it seemed that something was bearing into him like a pair of unseen eyes from somewhere in the dark.