The Winding Stream

[roguethree]

Her dark hair, unbound, fell past her shoulders and halfway down her back, spilling in gentle waves along her brown leather vest. She looked up at the blond paladin at her left, green eyes afire with enthusiasm.

"Nerves?" She asked, her leading tone suggesting she was ready to empathize.

"No." His eyes followed the voice back to its source, a mouth curved in a knowing smile that wasn't so knowing afterall.

"No? Not even butterflies?"

"No."

Her lips twisted into a right-leaning purse, the slender lines of her eyebrows flattening into less of an arch. "Really. I thought you'd be . . . I'd be worried about what people would be thinking of me as I came back."

"What would I gain from that, Elandress?" His gold-flecked gaze shifted to the Avanthyr docks as the sailors milling about them lashed and bound the boat to the platform. He crossed his arms over his chest, pinching the half-sleeves of his navy tunic as he stood, waiting. His arms and armor were wrapped and secured with rope and tackle, sitting silently at his left as two men shoved out a long, broad plank, its heavy edge striking the dock below with an emphatic thump as the walkway was made. Upon his left hip yet rested the Wrath blade.

The more common passengers disembarked first, the ship's sailors mingling among them as their mismatched steps took them down the ramp and into the port. They were followed by a train of paladins, pilgrims from distant lands. They all wore simple tunics, the symbols of their gods hanging from cords and chains from their necks, and their possessions - scarcely more than arms and armor - hanging from their backs. They marched past with evident purpose, only a few now sparing glances at the traitor and the paladin who would be his friend. The last of them stopped, a second burden in his arms, and he thrust it toward the woman with unbound hair.

"Your pack, Elandress. I'm not going to mule it all the way to the city."

"Of course, Rhothen." She took the pack, and with little bobs of her shoulders and weaves of her arms mounted it to her back.

"Let's go, Elandress." Rhothen's voice was seasoned with the barest of urgencies as his dark eyes flitted to the blond paladin standing beyond his companion.

She turned her whole frame, the weight of her pack demanding such, to question the paladin at her left.

"Go on," he bade her, and he saw the reluctance in her eyes. The challenge smoldering in Rhothen's gaze fell away as the Wrath voiced his approval, and after a few more moments' pause, the woman turned and started down the walk. Rhothen moved to follow, sparing no more attention to the other man.

Dain Tornbrook watched them descend the ramp, watched them join the other paladins as they congregated five score yards from the water's edge. With ample space, they all brought forth majestic steeds of all colors, black and brown and dappled. They all secured their burdens atop their horses as startled townsfolk looked on in awe and astonishment, and they set out as one, leading their mounts by their bridles as they ascended the road out of Avanthyr and toward the heart of the Valley.

Dain bent and recovered his own pack, slipping its straps over his shoulders and gripping the leather bindings with his hands as Priya stepped up beside him. They stepped down the ramp and alighted on the platform, not breaking stride as they walked deeper into and through the port. The sun grew higher as their forms grew distant from the deck of the ship that had borne them back to Sundren. Soon the bustling town was behind them, and far ahead, beyond their sight now, were two dozen virtuous warriors, marching in two columns.

"I think I shall go immediately to Aquor and see to the temple. I'll send someone to the estate with my things, and I'll make my way when such is appropriate." She already brandished the familiar shard in her hands, its glow brightening as she pressed soft lips to his mouth.

He closed his eyes and relished the kiss until the magic of the Aquor nexus spirited her away, lifting their lids a few moments after her form had vanished. He turned over his shoulder, marking the port he was leaving behind him. He turned back, staring down the road he would travel; the horizon was bare of the dust that marked passage, the new knights well ahead of him. He shifted his pack, realigning his straps as all of the metal he carried jostled and clanked as it fell back into place. His boots met the earth, rolling through long strides meant for the Valley.

[roguethree]

"I can't believe they got him," Jarrick mused. He bore half of a man's weight looped over his shoulder, the other half carried by his counterpart.

"Yeah," Piper returned. "Apparently wasn't hard, either. Guess all that legend was just stories."

Booted toes drug the ground behind them, belonging to their senseless burden as they labored on to the limits of the village of Sestra. They put some distance between themselves and the edge of the quiet town.

"You want to have some fun with him first?" Piper let go of his half of the load, and the man tumbled to the ground, dust rising around his body as it slumped to the earth.

"Might as well."

They kicked the man, stomped on him, spat at him. They laughed and taunted as the man only grunted faint protest, his body limply bending under every boot, every fist. He was already half-dead, his tunic covered in his own blood. They passed gleeful minutes like this, just the dust and the blood and the man who curled beneath their strength.

"Alright, alright. Hold him up," Jarrick bade. Piper reached under the beaten man's arms and lifted him part way, suspending his torso above the ground and letting his head hang forward. Jarrick skipped back a few steps, then sprinted forward, lifting his boot into the held man's mouth and swinging through as if punting a ball.

"Holy shit!" Piper laughed as he let loose of the man, watching Jarrick with a wild grin. Jarrick howled his triumph and feigned polishing his shoe.

Dain sat up on his knees, and the two other men's laughter fell away to silence as they watched his cheeks twitch and hollow. The paladin spat out perhaps a fourth of a mouthful of blood.

"No . . . how . . . ?" Piper stammered, his smile gone.

"I bit my tongue," Tornbrook explained. He stuck a finger in his mouth as he stood, brow furrowing as he prodded at the oral wound.

In their joyful abuse, Jarrick and Piper hadn't noticed the paladin touching his wounds, sealing them with fleeting passes of his hands. They hadn't noticed the annoyance in the man's muted groans as they kept pushing him over with their feet as he tried to stand.

Dain punched Piper in the throat, an unremarkable jab. Piper stopped breathing, his neck collapsed. Jarrick he took by the collar of his armor, and he smashed his forehead into the other man's nose. Blood and teeth exploded from the spot, spraying out from the cavity where Jarrick's face had been. Dain bent down and wiped his face clean on Piper's tabard before stepping over his still form.

"I pray your last sin is forgotten in your judgment, gentlemen, for you have tempered my pride and returned my focus. Grace and gratitude."

Dain drew the scales over his chest, and he turned his back to the town, striding forth down the empty road. Every few strides, his tongue bulged at the side of his cheek, and he spat a little bit of redness.

"My tongue."

[roguethree]

To know loss . . .

I know loss. I know it well. This sword has asked me to recount it all and will keep asking until it slips from my grasp. It asks to spur me on. It asks to make me remember the blood in my oaths, and I let it ask. I once argued with this sword, contended with this sword, clashed wills with this sword. It is now a companion, a judgmental friend who chastises me whenever I am sloth, who prods me when I dare rest. I once loathed the gentle voice slipping around the edges of my consciousness, but now, it is an ally, an enduring memory of the things I've done and must continue to do.

I know loss. I have lost thrice more: an elf who promised honor and fortitude and was wanting the moment she was asked her quality. Another elf who once promised love, offered scorn, and now steps deep into shadows darkened by green flame. A brother of faith, an aged Ilmatari, infirm in his wizened years, his conviction lost in the despair of a town crying for a savior he hasn't the will to be.

Aye, I have lost, and I still dare to lose a fourth. A woman, tall and strong, full of a sense of her purpose but blind to its use. A smile rare in its honesty and rarer in its frequency. Brown hair, brown eyes. Pain in those eyes, and I dare to mend it at the risk of loss again, for the small chance of a companion, a friend made of ideals and conviction and flesh. For the scars of my heart, I dare to hope that there are yet people with the strength and courage to walk a thin line beside me, balanced and unwavering. Will she? I have faith.

Faith, named a crutch, but I will reveal it to be taller and broader than any crutch. It will be a pillar upon which she will stand and see the world for what it can be, for what we can make it. I hope. She has hope; I can feel it, hope to be more than what she is, which is already more than she could ever see in herself. She has hope, and while she rejects, resents the gods, she already has faith: in me. I have to be worthy of that faith, else again, I will know loss.

[roguethree]

He lay awake in bed - a fine, bed, overrun with pillows and sheets of expensive, sensual fabric that was ever pliant beneath tumbling bodies. Thin slivers of moonlight dove through the distant windows, spreading pale, white light that gave fire to the tiny golden suns alive in the paladin's blue irises. A woman lay next to him, on her side and against his side, one delicate hand splayed carefully over the man's heart. She slept softly. Indeed, everything about her was soft: soft, dark curls spilling over soft, slender shoulders; soft, dark, lustrous eyes concealed by placid eyelids; soft, shapely lips that spoke soft words in the waking hours; soft, inviting flesh that artfully and always eagerly bonded with him . . .

There were notions in the darkness of the ceiling overhead, questions and answers, thoughts and discontent.

"You're not seeing the big picture."

"His death was useless, cowardly."

"No one sees that part."

"You don't command anyone; they just agree to fight in the same space as you."

"She was tormented every day, until she finally ended it herself. Was there something between you?"

"Here's my coins. We're even, right?"

" . . . mercenary. That's what I am."

"He died because he was afraid to fight anymore. He abandoned us."

". . . in the Exarch's dungeon."

"I believe in you, Dain."

"I'm not sleeping until you do."

"I name you Melaelv Laanilm."

"Goodbye, Tornbrook."

"All you do is judge. No wonder you don't have friends."

"Your heart races, my love."

It took the man a few moments to understand that the last voice, spoken so softly, spilled forth not from his mind, but from the soft, shapely lips near his shoulder.

"My heartbeat woke you," the paladin breathed as he tilted his chin backward, stretching his throat and swelling his chest with a deep, balancing breath.

"Should it not? This one beats as vibrantly in my breast as it does in yours." Her hand, so gentle and innocent, yet rested upon his heart, and when he turned his head to look upon the woman, he saw the patient knowledge in the ensorceling eyes that had never judged him.

He closed his eyes as he rocked his head back to face the ceiling, but his left hand swung and fell over the hand that sensed the tremors in his core. He slipped his fingers into the woman's empathic grasp and breathed out the air that briefly, vainly suggested resistance.

"The sword?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

The woman's mouth tensed into a small frown. "You are not sure which is true and which is suggested."

"Sometimes."

A shapely limb reached through the black space between the sheets and the paladin's body, and the gentle pull of a heel against the side of his knee had him turning on to his side to face his companion. She entwined their legs and held him fast, and when her arms snaked beneath and over his torso, he instinctively cradled her neck in the crook of his arm, pressed their naked chests together in the unconscious embrace he had known for these last two years.

"Be still my darling, my love," she breathed into his neck. "Always, I can see you."

The paladin weaved his fingers into the Sunite's unbound curls. He breathed in, breathed out again as he gave himself over, let himself be enveloped. He closed his eyes against the blackness shadowing the corners of their room, against the voices that told him not to sleep.

[roguethree]

I do not know if I will ever find a soul more akin to mine than was Peridan Durothil's. He was, in so many ways, the man I was destined to be, carrying a legend of persistment maimings and scars as a looking glass into the horror he had seen and overcome. You could not look upon the one-eyed elf and not know that he had taken his worth at least two fold from those opposite the field. Chosen by a blade, as was I, to be Sundren's protector, and dead for it, as he long suspected he would be. Ridiculed for sacrifice, as I have been. Spoken of in reverent tones, as I have been. That his immortal soul fights on in its next life is great comfort, even though my life lived in truest purpose will not deliver me to that friend's side again.

Tigen was never a paladin. A deception, fabricated by the spirit that guided him. It wasn't long before he regained his nature, and it wasn't until then I saw how ... different ... our ideals were, how he had no concern for the order of things or rising above the depravity of the enemy. Tigen was ever focused on the simplicity of the outcome, though he governed himself well for my sake. Were he here today, I would thank him for that. Loyal. And gone. Friendship, to him, judged on no principles; to me, completely dependent on principles, and so the paladin will walk alone.

I'm ... amused by my close kinship with two elves, closer than I have been with one of my own humankind, save my love. I have heard said that the elves live their lives in moments - moments of tens of years among the lesser-lived folk, decades in which new friends age and die. I don't know how I feel about being a moment in Peridan's life, or Tigen's, a span of a handful of years placed within centuries.

And yet I've outlived them, so there they are: moments in my own brief span, a few years among twenty-eight that stand out brighter than the rest, but they're gone all the same, the agony of their passing ebbing with each sunrise. So it has been. Friends have fallen, as Anasath and Peridan and, I suspect, Tigen, and they have become other, as the man who called himself "Shield" when he left me to bleed against the Black Hand; Kyle Rendell when he pawned a gift given out of friendship; as Maia when she violated for Darius his oath of honor and dignity; as Julia, when she forsook her friends for the sake of her own flesh; as Lasvi, when she cast away friendship and gave over to a darker nature. I could continue.

Those who should be friends - Darius, the faithful of our temple - are not. My fault, in some respects, as this armor has grown thick. Theirs, in others, as friendship does not oft grow between a leader of men and those who wish to be led. In truth, I don't know if I actually want their friendship; I have buried enough of them in my young life to be weary, and most of them for having trusted me or for being the champion where I should have been.

She is all that remains, she and my faith. She would follow me anywhere, for she can do her goddess's work well in any place, and should I not be so skilled? I would not be human without her; she sustains me with grace and love, and surely it is the purest love, a peerless patience and devotion. She taught me love, in its best sense, and my greatest failure would be to die by the sword, to abandon her in violence and blood.

There are paladins who have aged and known peace; could I be such? Is there strength for me in laying down the sword? Maybe someday. For now, this letter has come and demands my every thought:

Tornbrook, the Eleventh,

Soulful prayers to the Just that you are well in your troubled land. I oft pray for you and the Triadic there, as truly a daunting task is the peril there. Still, I write you with news, and offer of a quest to the glory of the Maimed and the Three.

Through devoted prayer and divination, we have discovered the Chalice and the Talisman; you know the artifacts of which I write. They are well concealed, and the task will be worthy of the Hammers, as many as we can muster. Eight have agreed. Tornbrook, will you join us? Send, or write.

The Even-handed lift you according to his grace,

Truewater

[roguethree]

This post is over a year late in coming. Here it is all the same.

Bridle in hand, the paladin walked and led his horse along the Pioneer's Way, no dust rising from their footfalls as the ground lay damp from one of the frequent Sundarian rains. Still, the sun shone down and brightly, its face illuminating a windless, near-silent day, the only muted sound the dull report of shod feet thumping against the soft earth. The paladin walked with no armor, stripped of the ornate case that had kept him alive these years in the valley, and only the familiar, pommel-less sword hung at his left hip, its trailing scabbard trapping one half of his cloak.

Above him, sidelong in the saddle of the noble, white charger, sat the woman of peerless beauty and patience, clad in red silks and a fine cloak and hood that could never hope to diminish her radiant presence. She watched the paladin with dark and lustrous eyes as he walked alongside and beneath her, the horse's reins loosely held in his left hand more for show than for need.

"I wonder where this quest will take us," she said aloud, her soft voice still nearly startling the paladin for all the quiet surrounding them.

He looked up at the Sunite, meeting her gaze for several moments before the beginnings of a smile crept into and out of his mouth. "As do I," he replied, eyes returning to the road.

"You leave much behind." The prodding observation.

"Less than I have already left, I think."

"It is all one, love."

He held his reply as a small group of red-armored men and women approached in a small column, their spears' heads polished and glinting in the sun. The paladin pulled up his hood with a toneless sigh.

"Halt there, travelers!" The lead called as his company neared. The paladin halted, as did his horse and the lady it carried. "Business on the emperor's road?"

"Bound for the Gate, and outward," came the paladin's even response. From within his hood, he carefully studied the soldiers' armor: well kept, insignias in place, fitted.

"Hm. Traveling light, aren't you?"

"We need little," came the Sunite's disarming reply. She smiled warmly, blessing the small column with her perfect countenance. "And no small thanks to the steadfast Legion that keeps the road fit for honest use."

The soldier nodded stiffly. His trained eyes lingered perhaps a bit too long on the woman, and then he leaned forward with widened eyes and furrowed brow. "Miss Priya Sera?"

"Yes, brave soldier."

"Surely it is, and that means ... ." He looked back to the hooded paladin, and his eyes found the sword hilt reaching out from his belt, its end shorn and absent a pommel. "... Lord Tornbrook."

The paladin lifted his chin, just a touch. "Aye."

"I see." The soldier stiffened. "On we go. Vae victis."

"Vae victis," the company echoed in unison, and they moved past the three, flanking either side of them and reforming their column beyond them. The clanking of their mail slowly faded as their march carried them nearer and nearer the horizon. The horse looked at the paladin. The paladin looked at the horse, and with a turn of his chin, he gestured for the road ahead. The white steed plodded forward.

"Rather cool, wasn't he?" the Sunite asked.

"He was."

"Ah." She smiled one of her knowing smiles, and it wasn't long before they were passing the Four Lanterns Inn and standing before the blasted-open rock that centuries ago had barred passage into this Valley.

"Ready?" He asked her, looking up for her approval.

"You know I will follow you anywhere, dear heart, but are you ready?" She reached down and pulled back his hood, bringing his gold-flecked gaze into the light and directly in line with hers.

"I am. The field has changed; it's beyond me."

"Liar," she gently scolded. "You could be their champion again. I know you do not think you couldn't."

"I could." He started them walking forward again. "But I can't bring them peace. The wars here will outlive us, and I've decided there's more to life."

"I always hoped you would, noble paladin," she teased, but a spark lit in her eyes at his words, and it flared brighter when he stepped into the stirrup and swung himself up into the saddle behind her. She exhaled with content as he wrapped his arms around her middle, and she leaned against him, burying half of her face into his neck. "What lies ahead, hero?" she murmured, lips barely parting as the keen and powerful horse gently bore them along.

The paladin looked up as they passed through the great fissure that separated the Sundered Valley from the rest of the world. Mountainous rock that had ripped apart lifetimes ago towered overhead. "I can't see so far."

"Then what can you see, Dain Tornbrook?"

"You. Always, I can see you."


Retired December 2013.