CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - PAYING TRIBUTE

Isenholf rose to a sitting position. He clutched at his wounded leg with his left hand, but grabbed his sword from the ground with his right. Looking up at Raedrick with a cruelly triumphant grin, he said, “You should have taken my offer.”

Raedrick strained against the force holding him fast. They had come so close! He had long since stopped believing in fairness, but all the same the injustice of losing this way was too much to take.

Isenholf pushed himself across the ground using his good foot and drew his sword back. “Time to die,” he said as he thrust upward with his blade.

All at once, the force holding Raedrick vanished, and he brought his saber down. The two blades met in the air before his belly, but not before Isenholf’s sword tip struck home. For a heartbeat, he felt his mail straining and he knew it was going to fail. Then he twisted his hips and leaned backward. The sword cut a trail upward from his navel up to the lower ribs on his left side before the impact of his saber forced it aside. The pain of the wound told him his mail had failed at least partially. But it was not the crushing agony of a death blow, so he counted his blessings.

Isenholf’s eyes went wide with shock at Raedrick’s sudden movement. He lost his grip on his sword as Raedrick’s saber struck it, and he collapsed back onto the ground. “How?” he said weakly.

Raedrick glanced over to the side and saw the mage lying on the ground, blood spurting from a wound in his neck, and Melanie helping Julian to his feet. “You chose your friends poorly,” he said. Turning back to Isenholf, he moved the edge of his saber to the side of the brigand’s neck.

“Do it,” Isenholf said through gritted teeth.

He almost did. But looking down at the brigand, helpless on the ground, he recalled the screams of the villagers that day, the day he decided to follow Isenholf’s earlier lead and desert. A very different reason, but the same path. If he killed Isenholf now, while he was helpless, how would he be better than what he had run from?

Raedrick shook his head and stepped back a pace. “No.”

Isenholf looked at him with unbelieving eyes. He opened his mouth, but Raedrick cut him off with a boot to the nose. He fell back onto the ground, knocked senseless.

“See you at your trial.”

With that, Raedrick turned away from the defeated brigand and hurried over to Melanie and Julian.

* * *

Julian was on his feet and standing next to Melanie by the time Raedrick got to them. But while she stared at Selam as though stricken, he looked over the battlefield.

Several of Isenholf’s surviving men had already fled, those who were able to ride quickly outdistancing the others. There were not that many of them, maybe a dozen total. He had to hand it to Raedrick, the gambit with the archers worked beautifully.

Truth to tell, he was amazed they were still alive. Although from the look of things Selam would not be able to claim that for much longer.

Raedrick nodded to Julian in the same businesslike manner he always affected after a battle then squeezed Melanie’s shoulder briefly before squatting down next to Selam.

“Did we…?” Selam said weakly.

Raedrick nodded. “Victory is ours.”

Selam smiled. His cheeks were very pale and his breath came in shallow rattles. He reached with a trembling hand for his sword, lying off to the side just out of reach. Raedrick stretched out and moved the sword closer, placing the grip into the palm of Selam’s hand. The dying man inhaled deeply and pressed the sword hilt to the center of his chest, over his heart.

“I have…” A sudden fit of coughing interrupted Selam’s speech. “I have no sons,” he said finally. “No one to pass it on to.” He inhaled quickly and pressed the sword handle up to Raedrick’s hands. “Use it with honor.”

Raedrick’s eyes widened and he shook his head. Pushing the sword back down to Selam, he replied, “Selam, I can’t take -”

“Do not dishonor me.” Another fit of coughing racked the stricken swordsman. His strength was fading quickly, but he managed to push the sword back up to Raedrick.

Julian’s friend hesitated, then nodded slowly. His hands closed over Selam’s on the hilt of his sword, and for a moment the two men looked at each other in silence. Then Selam smiled again and he let out a long rasping breath. His eyes glazed over and he did not breathe again.

Standing next to Julian, Melanie sobbed softly.

* * *

The funerals took place the next day.

By tradition of the Vale, family and close friends of the fallen cleaned the bodies and dressed them in their Holiday best. Then, at first light, they carried the bodies down to the docks and laid them in dinghies made for just such an occasion. For the rest of the morning, acquaintances would come by to pay their respects and offer gifts for the fallen to use in the next life.

Constable Malory drew a visit from just about every person in town. Selam, much fewer. Perhaps it was because he was a transplant and liked to keep to himself. Regardless, as Julian stood next to the dinghies all morning and watched the relative paucity of visitors who came for Selam, irritation grew within him, eventually turning to anger. Friendly or not, Selam had given his life for the people of the Vale. He deserved more recognition than this.

By the time Melanie limped down to pay her respects, Julian was about ready to hit someone. But for some reason, seeing her there, even as bruised and battered as she was, made him feel better. She waited in line to offer flowers to Constable Malory and say a short prayer, but she did not linger. Until she came to Selam’s dinghy.

Melanie nodded a greeting to Julian and moved quickly to the dinghy. She crouched down next to it and dropped something inside. When she did not rise after a few minutes, Julian became concerned and stepped over next to her. Crouching down as well, he saw that she was weeping.

They crouched there in silence for several minutes; Julian because he did not know what to say and did not want to intrude on her thoughts, Melanie for her own reasons. It was she who broke the silence.

“I only spoke with him once, and I was a condescending ass.”

Julian was tempted to inquire how that was different from any other conversation she had, but thought better of it. That would have been perhaps a bit too harsh under the circumstances. Instead, he reached out and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze.

“I didn’t know him well, but he was a man of honor. Protecting you was his duty, so he did the right thing.”

She nodded. “I know. That’s what makes it so hard.”

Julian drew a deep breath. “I’ve been fuming all morning about how many more people have been paying respects to Malory than him. Why was he so less deserving than Malory, you know? He deserves just as much a tribute from these people, and they’re snubbing him. But now I think maybe that’s ok. The fact that you’re alive and able to carry on, that’s a better tribute than some trinkets thrown into a boat.”

Melanie nodded slowly, but didn’t say anything. She just reached up, laid her hand atop his, and squeezed it gently.

* * *

At noon, the official funeral procession, consisting of the Mayor, Lydelton’s High Priest, and the deceased’s families, followed by musicians playing a memorial dirge on pipes and harps, walked from the Temple down to the docks.

The usual funeral ingredients came next: selected stories from the person’s life, words of encouragement for the mourning, reminders to hope in the gods and look forward to righteousness’ rewards in the next life. Julian listened impassively, paying little heed to those words, meaningless as they were. Melanie and Raedrick stood at his side. She wept again. He stood at attention as though he were still in the Army, which Julian supposed was appropriate.

After all the words had been said, men hoisted sails on the dinghies, untied the boats from the dock, and pushed them out into the lake. The light breeze filled the dinghies’ sails, carrying them further from shore. When they were about fifty yards out, Hiram and Rolf, carrying bows, limped to the end of the dock along with Gilroy, who carried a lit torch. The bowmen nocked and held their arrow tips into the torch’s flame. Tips afire, the men drew back and sighted in carefully.

The loosed arrows rose in a graceful arc then descended, landing squarely in the center of each dinghy. Flammable materials had been strategically placed in each, and when the arrows struck the flames quickly spread until both dinghies were aflame from bow to stern.

The crowd gradually filtered away until only the deceased’s closest family and friends remained. Julian, Raedrick, and Melanie remained even after they had departed, only leaving when the last remnants of the dinghies had sunk beneath the water of the lake.

Glimmer Vale is the first book of the Glimmer Vale Chronicles, an ongoing heroic fantasy series set in a world of valor and magic. It will be published here, one chapter per week, on Tuesday.

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