CHAPTER 917: THINGS WE SHARE (PART ONE)

"Lady Heila," Liam Dunn said hesitantly as he approached the diminutive witch, stepping carefully around a group of Glass Eyed archers who were distributing bundles of arrows from wooden crates they’d towed through the wilderness on improvised sleds. Emmie and her father Kurtz trailed close behind him, the young squire’s eyes darting between the bustling preparations and the human she was supposed to be attending to.

Around them, the army had transformed into a complex dance of loosely organized chaos. A small group of bearish soldiers from the Vale of Mists unfurled the banners that had been carefully prepared for this battle before they ever left the Vale. While they worked, they seemed to treat each banner with the same kind of tenderness and reverence they would display toward the powerful person that each banner represented, never letting even a corner of the fabric touch the muddy, churned snow beneath their feet.

Meanwhile, Lightfoot scouts scurried between groups, acting as messengers relaying orders from the group of captains around Dame Sybyll now that they’d passed the time for scouring the wilderness and searching for signs of the enemy. And through it all, the acrid smell of pine pitch and woodsmoke filled the air as dozens of torches were lit and passed from hand to hand, enveloping the forest in a flickering, reddish-orange glow and casting dark, flickering shadows across the snowy ground.

"Lady Heila, can you tell me what just happened?" Liam continued, raising his voice slightly over the sound of adjusting their armor and checking on their weapons. "What was all of that talk of dancing, and where is that man taking Hugo?"

It was getting easier, Liam realized, to refer to the Eldritch as people rather than demons, but he still had to watch his words carefully. The thorny aura that Heila radiated ever since she dressed for war made it even harder to mind his words, but he felt like he had no choice but to seek out the horned witch when his own ’guide’, Emmie, didn’t know anything more about the newcomer than he did.

"That man is named Jalal," Heila said with a considering look on her face as she stared in the direction where Jalal had taken Hugo. For a moment, she considered following him, if for no other reason than to satisfy a portion of the curiosity that had sat within her chest ever since Amahle had told her and Ashlynn about the Oracles and the remnants of their followers who were still scattered across the Eldritch world.

Deep down, both she and Ashlynn believed that the more they could learn about the ancient Oracles who had once walked Eldritch lands, the more they would understand about the powers at the Church who had usurped control of that power from the world. As tempting as it was, however, she knew better than to interfere in someone else’s ritual, and her curiosity could wait until later. Instead, she turned her attention to Liam Dunn and her squire, explaining more for the latter’s benefit than the former’s.

"Jalal is the Eldritch Lord of Airgead Mountain, the one humans call the Cat Lord," Heila explained. "His clan has some things in common with your home in High Fen City, Emmie."

"Brave gladiators like your father fight in the arena to prove their strength in High Fen City," the diminutive witch added. "On Airgead Mountain, they ’dance with death under the stars.’ It’s just that they either have knives in their hands when they’re ’dancing’ or claws, and they fight until someone draws blood."

"Do they stop at first blood?" Emmie asked as her young mind filled with images of a mighty arena atop the mountain where feline gladiators fought under the shining stars of the night sky. "Or do they keep going until someone gives up? Or until someone dies?" Emmie asked excitedly with eyes that shone brightly like stars themselves.

"It depends on why they’re dancing," Heila said, reaching out to ruffle her young squire’s hair. Emmie had grown up in the shadow of the Arena, and she was always interested in stories of fights between champions. But Heila had brought her along to tonight’s battle so that she could learn the difference between battles in the arena and the wars that the Vale of Mists and the people of Airgead Mountain had been fighting for more than a hundred years.

"Tonight, we’re going to be fighting Ian Hanrahan, the man who murdered Dame Sybyll’s mother and the son of the man who murdered her father to steal her home and her lands from her," Heila explained as her voice grew solemn. "Those same men have been trying to plunder Lord Jalal’s home for as long as he’s been alive. When he asked to join the dance tonight, he wanted to hunt down and kill the men who had been plundering his home."

Heila didn’t look at Liam as she explained things in simple terms that a young girl like Emmie could understand, but she didn’t have to. When she put it so plainly, it was impossible for Liam to ignore the similarities between what he had done to the Eldritch villagers near Dunn Barony and what had happened to Lord Jalal’s people for the past century.

As he stood here in the middle of an army that was preparing to conquer not only Hanrahan Town but the whole of the barony, Heila was making it abundantly clear to Liam Dunn that he was exactly the same as the men they had come to kill.

The only difference was that Lady Ashlynn hoped to find a path to peace with the Dunns instead of crushing them... and the only reason they had that opportunity was because his family had never made an enemy like Sybyll Hanrahan.

"So why didn’t Dame Sybyll want Lord Jalal to join the fight?" Emmie asked. "If his enemies are down there, shouldn’t he be allowed to fight them?"

"He should be," Heila acknowledged. "But the men he wants to hunt and kill are cowards who are afraid to stand up in real battles. They attack farmers and miners, and people who turn chunks of rock into beautiful art so they can steal their valuables instead of restricting the fight to warriors who could threaten their lives. Instead of caring for the innocent among their defeated foes, they kill them and take their things. That’s why Dame Sybyll called them thieves and brigands instead of soldiers or warriors."

One of the greatest lessons the Eldritch had to learn about humans was that humans never saw them as people. If humans could see the Eldritch as people, then they would understand that murdering a farmer to take his lands was wrong, just as it was wrong to slaughter a family to take their wealth.

Even humans knew better than to celebrate thieves and murderers. They made an example of those villains whenever they were caught so that everyone understood that there were some things that would never be tolerated. And yet, when the people humans were slaughtering were Eldritch, it didn’t matter what kind of savagery they resorted to, they would be praised and worshiped as heroes.

It was a form of public adoration that Liam Dunn had known for most of his adult life, ever since he returned from the Duke’s Academy in Keating Duchy and began to lead his father’s men in battle against the Eldritch.

But Heila couldn’t allow him to keep that image of himself as a hero if there was going to be any sort of reconciliation between their peoples. So when she spoke of the people who had attacked Airgead Mountain, she used the bluntest and least honorable terms she could think of to describe them, exactly as Dame Sybyll had done... and she was going to make certain that young Lord Liam Dunn received the message.