Tagaern - waking - I woke with a gasp, covers thrown off to the floor, sweat drenching the sheets. Where? Light. Room. No threat. The ringing in my ears…from my own cry. Some things didn’t change here in these Northern lands. Not at all. The vision was just as real as ever…the fallen beside me and the encroaching horde, calling out to my brothers to keep fighting. To give no ground. Only the Orc leader was different, slashed in half by my blade Fury before he could bring his wicked blade down again across my Red Shield. By Qinnah. Duncan had been there too, I realized. Seeing him again too had brought it all flooding back to my brain and it throbbed and rang with the backlash.
With a groan, I rolled over to the side of the bed and sat up. It was good I’d sent the fine wench Duncan had set me with that night off after she had reminded me I was a man. Would have terrified her awake in the middle of the night like others from years before when the nightmares began after the war. I struggled to my feet. So heavy. What a bloated pig I’ve become. By the Shield Maidens, why on Earth am I still here? Why am I not buried with my comrades? Qinnah, please give me strength this day. Show me why you sent me here for I do not understand it. I lumbered over to the full length mirror and took in the fat stranger there. Fat, scarred and older than who I felt I was within. I felt fatigue all through me. That and the wicked pain down one side where that Orc landed his blow. I went for my sword and unsheathed it. I pointed it downwards to the floor reverently, slowly falling to my knees with a groan. Must find strength in Qinnah.
I still could remember myself in the pigsty, in the muck there, drunk as a sot…and not giving a damn anymore about anything. How long I’d been descending into my own hell I couldn’t say…that I wished to languish there, wallowing in my own misery was all I knew. And it was all I felt I could know. Somehow it was She who I heard, wallowing where I was back in Materune, in my darkest hour. And I could see myself from outside myself. And I felt the disgust.
*This is not your fate, Tagaern Ünser. This is not how you will end.* Then, it was as if I heard my deceased father in my ears, "You must finish what it is you have started.” Was this in my mind? And then again she returned. *You must go. You must go now.*
I could not look to see. I was no longer the man I once was. No longer captain nor hero. I knew I was not worthy and I could not look. That I had not died that bloody day must have been by the Shield Maidens’ protection, the blade meant to slice my head in two only gashing me across the face. Still I wasn’t completely broken enough to fall. Now this purposeless waste I had become was dishonor to all who had died by my side and I wept there in the muck, ashamed. But there was more. This feeling that came not from within but from outside. This was not the end. In my mind’s eye I could see the winged woman in her flowing gown with breastplate and studded metal and leather armor over her skirt, sword by Her side.
No. I was unworthy and broken. I could not look. This was not the eve of battle. Long had it been that I could ever think myself worthy of Her favor, as being valorous. My Red Shields were broken, with most dead. And with them I’d felt so too my soul. I was not worthy of Her blessing, of Her words. This was delusion. Wasn’t it? But the message repeated and I felt myself fade into the oblivion of sleep.
It was the first time in more months than I could even recall that I woke without the nightmares before the crack of dawn. In its place, as though smoke had been lifted, was a sense of clarity the likes of which I had forgotten. My mouth felt putrid and my body was covered in filth but somehow it was better. I remember I couldn’t decide, as I stumbled up out of the muck, whether to laugh or to cry. But it was the first time that I didn’t feel dead inside. I had to finish what I’d started...
Traveling by Ethesia Token to Dowry had been disconcerting enough, but nothing like the uncertainty of finding where I was to go now or the strangeness of this foreign northern land. From the moist air to the cliffside buildings and smells, the strange magical rolling carriages…everything was so different from the vast expanse of hills and plains, the massive earth and stone buildings I’d known in Materune. Here I was, an old veteran, feeling like a youngling seeing the world for the first time. The road travel, more familiar, and not uneventful. The marauding band of Orcs attacking the road crew ahead made distant memories return to me and there I was again on the front line. Heavyset oaf…my balance thrown off by this heavy mass I now wore, my aged and long unused muscles quickly reminding me again that the warrior I once was had been left in Materune! After recovering from a misplaced swing and suffering a rattling blow across my side, I drew up my blade Fury for a solid hit at last. This one was the leader all right. Much tougher than his companions who Baldric beside me fought from taking my flank. Pressing forward my momentary advantage, it felt familiar, like an old friend long time lost to parry the beastman’s next strike with my shield and then deliver my overhead slash to finish him. In that moment that I saw the look of the fury transform to lifelessness I was there once again amongst the trees…the ground blood soaked...the weak cries from the dying, of both fallen men and elves.
Recovering myself, it felt good to have saved the road crew. To have a sense of meaning again. I may have lost more than I cared to consider of my fighting prowess, but today at least I had enough. By the Shield Maidens, I had enough.
Then upon reaching the quiet waystation, Kella’s House, the reason for my calling became a bit clearer. Standing there, organizing the shipment of goods arrived like a regular merchantman was Duncan Tham of the Grasslions. It took a moment for him to recognize me. That was understandable. But after that moment, two warriors of the realm we were again, it seemed to me. That night we talked long and I learned of the success he had had, of the better decisions he had made when the war was over. Now he had this new life. I felt envy wash over me. I couldn’t fight it. For it had been the Red Shields that day who’d kept the Grasslions from being dealt a deadly flank attack. And we had held the line to the last man. To the last breath. But the glory was not ours that day. The envy was there and then just as quickly it was gone, for Duncan was the true man he had always been. And Duncan knew the truth of that day too. We drank together for our fallen comrades as brothers. And I felt gratitude that he had done well for himself, that he had brought honor to his men, and that he had even helped some war orphans along the way. What a self-centered ass was I to compare myself.
And he told me of another of the Grasslions, who worked alongside companions from a group called Richter Holdings. Perhaps if I needed work then I should work with them. Signs and portents, I wondered. His Grasslion troop was a Half-Orc, Hakaar. He sounded vaguely familiar to me, if nothing else for his great size and his youth back then among Duncan’s veterans. Now Duncan was training him too and seemed to have fondness for him, almost like a father I felt in how he spoke of him. Perhaps, just perhaps, this was part of why I was here, and part of why I could have a second chance before I left this world. Whether I was crazy or whether Qinnah really had reprimanded me at the bottom of my darkest pit, perhaps this was my path to redeem myself and regain my honor. There was only one way to find out.
