Country's War

     .10

Death's Song

     Though they were far from the village, they heard it hover over the splashes of rain. It was a confused mess that bounced off the bark and swirled high into the canopy and hung there, like a black fog in an unceasing melodic rush. Mahya felt his stomach twist with the voices. Oncoa's footsteps gathered speed, rarely had he seen his father nervous, but it was unmistakable now. As evening crept in, a silent hidden thief behind the clouds, the rain slowed to a slither, as if the unisoned noise drove it back, up into the vapor from whence it traveled.
     Becoming more clear, voices moaned, and whimpered and cried, and Oncoa stopped walking. Mahya stopped too. He looked up at his father, and at first did not recognize him. His face was pale and his eyes emotion filled and reluctant. It was fear beneath his father's face.  Why was he so afraid? Mahya had heard this song before, long ago, but it did not scare him then, nor was he frightened now. It was a song that reminded him of home. He was more afraid of the look on his father's face than the song that drowned the rain.
     "What is that song father?" He finally found the nerve to ask. After a long breath, his father pulled his chin up and looked at his son, eyes of tears.
     "It is the song of death." And the chorus grew louder. Gasped hush fell over the jungle creatures, and everything was wrapped in a coat of thick humid air. Film grew over his tongue, and he tasted his breath and the must of the jungle. Suddenly, he was in the trees, leaves slapped at his face and his arms and twigs caught his hair. Inside his chest, his lungs jumped and air flew from his throat and an involuntary gulp of a cry escaped with it.
     Like a sack, he laid cradled in his father's arms, between his massive forearms and biceps, the air gushed past him, never had he moved so fast, it was difficult to catch his breath. He watched as Oncoa palmed one branch after another, swinging violently from tree to tree, leaping cavernous gaps without thought. Low hums became high pitched cries and audible lyrics. The words were breathless and morose, they didn't so much as float as take flight on an unsuspecting air.
      Heaved over shoulder, Mahya wrapped his arms round his father's neck and held on for life, as Oncoa used two hands to swing on thinly hanging vines. One snapped, and he felt as though they would careen to the jungle floor, but Oncoa used the momentum to cling to the side of a tree, and lockstep leaped to a branch and continued his forward motion until they landed like a thud behind a pack of villagers. None of whom turned towards them. The chorus was loud but soothing, and many tears flowed with the words. To Mahya they had no meaning. He tried to cry but could not. To see his father crying uncontrollable he felt embarrassed that he too could not.
     Encircled the villagers stood motionless, all singing the same tune. As Mahya and Oncoa made their way to the center, Mahya sat in the cradle of Oncoa's arm like a toddler. He wanted to wipe away his father's tears. Then he saw the old man, lying in the middle of the singing circle. He recognized him slightly, as the man who bestowed Yahna, and told stories around the beach campfires on celebratory nights. He remembered he had come to his bedside one morning when Mahya was very sick, and gave him a bitter drink to heal him.
     "I remember him." He whispered to his father as they stood over the dead man.
     "Egahna." Oncoa whispered back.

     That night in the hut they ate only bread and water around the fire pit at the middle of the trunk. The smoke billowed up and out of the top of the tree. Oncoa stayed with the other men. It was their duty to prepare the body and care for the family Egahna left behind. Anjah allowed her children to stay up late and held them close as they listened to the death song fade into the night. Mahya could smell the wet forest floor far below. He loved the aroma of mud and leaves and wet logs after the rain.
     "What do the words of the death song mean?" Mahya asked his mother with his head upon her shoulder.
     "They have meaning only to the singer." Mahay sat with that a moment. The fire crackled and his sister nodded off on a cushion fashioned from boarhide and stuffed with feathers.
     "You mean the words have no meaning."
     "They have the meaning of what the singer feels at the time." She stroked his hair and stared into the flames. The glow of the fire painted shadows on the wall. They looked like black creatures climbing and staring.
     "What did your song mean?" Anjah closed her eyes. Mahya waited a long time for her to respond.
     "When my father died...i felt alone. I was already married to Oncoa and we had Leyah... but it felt like the person who protected me all my life, was gone. And I knew I would never get that back. That's what my song meant." Mahya thought of a day when his father would be gone. He thought of how he had been protected from the wolves that very day. And he would have to protect himself from the wolves.
     A light thud shook the silence and they looked towards the door. Oncoa entered, sullen and dejected. His usual strength and vigor seemed to have been left with the family of the fallen.
     "Father. What happened? Where is Egahna? What did you tell his family? Who will lead Yahana? What was your death song about?"
    "Bed time Mahya. Go to your cot." Oncoa lifted Leyah and laid her in her bed. Anjah sauntered over to their room and slid roundly behind the long leaved curtain. Oncoa drowned the fire and the hut filled with smoke and darkness. Mahya bounced out of the hut and onto his cot. Tridder chirped sleepily somewhere far above. He heard his father hit his bed hard, and snore immediately. Stars swayed back and forth above the thick leaves of the canopy, winking at him a promise of dreams. He watched them and blinked back slowly. He saw the wolf fangs dripping with rain. Then the old man's body in the mud soaking wet. The songs that haunted the evening played in his head until he finally blinked into sleep. The shadow creatures danced around him while he dreamed. They danced to the death song and welcomed a new member of their hidden tribe of shadows.

Country's War

.9

Feed the Wolves

     Stones balanced in hand, Mahya swung from a branch and landed lithely on the bamboo walkway with a hand on the path. Tridder floated overhead with the wooden cup clasped in his talons and let go. It bounced off the crown of Mahya's head with a plunk and landed in his palm, and he rubbed the sore spot with the other hand. He side eyed Tridder as he chirped a chuckle and flew into the canopy. 

     The hut was dark and quiet, and the table still messy with breakfast. He lit a candle of brown wax and began clearing the table. He took the dishes over to a bamboo spouted hole and pulled on a hemp rope in the wall. From the spout water flowed and he rinsed the wooden dishes and utensils, saving the larger scraps and gathering them in a bucket. 

     The island wolves loved the  scraps, but he was afraid to feed them. Usually his father took the scraps to their cave. Once in winter he took Mahya with him, trembling, he hid behind Oncoa the entire time and sobbed when the wolves' eyes glowed in the dark enclave. They sprung out to feed from the slop. Oncoa rubbed their heads and they licked his hand. Mahya's hair stood on end, he could feel the wildness in them. A wildness that he knew could vault forth at any moment and devour him. He felt safe with his father, his large hands could crush the wolves heads like a fruit pod. 

     Mahya sensed a similar wildness in his father. Perhaps the wolves sensed it too. He gathered this to be the reason they respected him. Mahya felt none of the wild within himself, and was ashamed at his fear. Even now, collecting the scraps, he felt his shame collect in the front of his throat. On edge, he jumped to his feet at his father's voice from behind. He worried his father sensed this shame in his son as well.

     "Did you gather the rocks?"

     "They're stacked out front." Obscured by shadow, he could not see his father, the sun hidden high above the canopy cast no light in the hut. The jungle was quiet at the noon darkness, when people returned to their huts to nap and whisper.

     "Good. You've collected many rocks now. Good." His face still hidden, Mahya thought he heard a small smile in Oncoa's voice. "The Yahna will soon be here. Before I grant you your footprints, you must do one last thing to prove yourself to me." Mahya swallowed and hid himself in his chest. He stood very still, and stared where his father's face should have been. His giant hands grasped the top of a chair as he stepped forward into the candlelight, his eyes low and face blank, he barely moved his lips. "You must feed the wolves."

     Tropical clouds sprang forward from the sea with swift warm winds. The canopy rustled from far above and bristled and hissed and he saw spots of faces from hut windows and pathways and he trudged through the jungle pulling the scrap bucket behind him. At times he dragged it through the dirt, almost hoping it would tip over so he would have an excuse to stop and turn back. He thought of the Yahna and what it would mean to get his first footstep. He tarried onward. 

     He smelled the rain while it was still over the sea. He could make it to the cave before it fell, but he'd be caught in it on the way back. He quickened his pace. Now far from the huts, he felt his spine stiffen and his footsteps lighten, the creatures of the jungle strained to hear him. Every bush reached towards him, and more than once he gave out a yelp at the poke from an adjunct twig. 

     Rounding a fat trunked tree, the jungle darkened around him as the rain clouds blackened and descended on his path with a howling thunder. The cave bobbed towards him now and the rain dropped through the canopy. Sticky and string like, it was warm and sweaty, and as the cave neared him, the rain mixed with his tears. 

     Only a hundred feet before him, the eyes in the cave began to blink open and he heard their paws shuffle on the stone cave floor. He tossed the scraps towards the cave and turned to run and felt his nose press against the snout of a large, thickly coated brown wolf. Teeth exposed and panting carefully.

     "I'm not afraid." He thought. I'm not afraid. But his heart beat otherwise, and the wolf knew it. He backed away and slipped on the scrap heap. The wolf inched forward, licking its chops and lowering its head, Mahya pressed backwards, his palms slimy in the slop and rain and mud, all he could do was slide in the muck. The wolf crouched to pounce and Mahya covered his head with his arm and braced for impact, when he heard a familiar, reverberating thud from behind. The wolf wagged his tail and barked and yelped and jumped with his tongue hanging from his jaw. Oncoa wrestled with him a bit and fed him some of the scraps. Mahya stood teary eyed and ashamed as the rain soaked them all. His father stood with the bucket in hand and they walked home in the rain and silence. The wolves watched them disappear behind the fat tree, and they scooped up the scraps and vanished into the cave.

Country's War

.8

Yahna

     Waves broke upon hills of sand as the sun rose behind a tropical beach forest. Mahya rubbed his eyes stretched out his arms and yawned. From his hemp strewn hammock that twisted forward and back squeaking slightly with his movements, he could see his sister preparing breakfast in the tree hut across from him. He looked down between the hammock net to the jungle floor some 150 feet below him and saw a few fishermen returning home with a giant fish tied to sticks held by four men. He could smell the scales from here, and looked forward to dinner. He bounced from the hammock, swung on a branch, the canopy twirled green wheeled above him, and landed in the hut where his sister poured juice from a round spiky fruit with long thin leaves and yellow skin, into wooden cups. He tugged at her boarskin pants and shirt.

     "What's for breakfast?" 

     "Good morning Mahya. Nice of you to join us." She had been up for a few hours working with her mother, preparing for the day, while Mahya lazed about in his hammock. 

     "Is it sweetbread?" His voice rose with hope.

     "You did not get any syrup yesterday like mother asked." He closed his mouth dejected. She chopped leaves and sprinkled them in the cups.

     "Not fruit pudding again." She rolled her eyes to his whining. 

     "Perhaps you should get the ingredients to the breakfast you want, and then I can sleep while you cook."

     "Oh, you're doing a fine job. Besides, I wouldn't want to interfere with your wife training." He ducked as a giant wooden spoon came flying at his head. She went back to stirring, a bird chuckled somewhere behind them. 

     "Leyah?" His voice softened and he leaned over the table she was working over. 

     "Yes Mahya?" She answered reluctantly as she stirred. The fruit concoction began to thicken and her stirring slowed. He took the bowl from her and his vigorous stirs caused some of the pudding to spill over the side. 

     "How long til the Yahna?" He asked as he fingered the lip of the bowl and sucked on it.

     "You just asked me that yesterday." Leyah laid out more bowls and chopped stocks of leaves with orange bulbs at the end.

     "I know how long from yesterday, but how long from today?" He stirred again more carefully but just as vigorous.

     "About 7 moons, Mahya." Sun rays, orange and sleepy meandered through the hut between them as they worked. Noise followed close behind, as more villagers awoke. A dancing branch creaked and a thud onto the bamboo walkway of the hut interrupted them. Thick ankles atop hurried hardened feet entered and tore through the hut, and a round woman, tall and firm, tidied the floor and finalized breakfast as the children took their places around the table. Anjah looked at her children and let the sunlight across her face. 

     "Thank you for helping, Mahya." She sat across from them and laid out raw chunks of meat that bled on their plates, licking her fingers of the red trickles.

     "I did most of it." Leyah winced as she recognized the whining she emitted. Anjah ignored it.

     "Your father will be here in a moment. Do not pester him. He's tired" They sat quietly for a moment. The sunlight yellowed slightly now awake and prepped for the day. The chattering bird flew in from a window and sat upon Mahya's head.

     "Mother? Can we have sweetbread tomorrow?" Mahya sat his head on his knuckles with his elbow on the table. The bird cocked his head to the left waiting for the answer.

     "Did you find the syrup?" She asked as she searched the door for her husband.

     "I will today!" 

     "If you find the syrup then Leyah will make the bread." Mahya smiled and the bird flapped his wings and hopped.

     "Why can't Mahya make the bread and I find the syrup?" Anjah whipped her head around at her daughter.

     "Syrup finding is for the boys! Girls make the bread! You know that Leyah." Leyah forked the bleeding meat on her plate.

     "With thoughts like that I wonder if Canj will marry you."

     "Good." Leyah breathed out beneath her tongue. 

     "What was that?" Before she could inquire further the thick branch heaved and the leaves swooshed and a huge thud shook the hut. A giant man bowled through the door and put a flaming rock at the center of the table, then disappeared into another room. Anjah fanned the flames until the rock just glowed red and smoked. The Burly man bustled to the table, his giant wide shoulders and biceps blocked the sun and he clasped his fingers together and closed his eyes. The rest of the family did the same.

     "Gaia prepared us and made us strong to cherish and make use of her gifts in the light, so that we may defend her in the night, and strengthen her with our might. Amen." They touched their fingers to their hearts and to their foreheads then they all slapped the bloody meat on the heated rock. 

     "How was fishing Oncoa?" Anjah spoke over the sizzling meat.

     "Good." Oncoa nodded and bit the orange root bulb that was dwarfed in his giant palm. Mahya guzzled his juice. "We got a great fish for tonight." Finishing the juice Mahya had a large red ring around his lips. "And a surprise for the Yahna." Oncoa smirked mischievously revealing large dimples in his cheeks. His mustache was thick under his nostrils and thinned at the edge of the crease of his lips and his beard was cut close but shabbily.

     "What is it father?" Mahya fed his leaves to the bird with the red stripes and black feathers, perched on his head. 

     "Mahya what did I say about pestering?" Anjah snapped.

     "Don't feed that to Tridder. I gathered and prepared those for you!" Leyah snatched the thin leaves from the bird's beak and tossed them back to Mahya's plate. The bird chirped wildly and flapped his wings. Oncoa laughed boisterously and heartily and sipped from his juice. They all flipped their meat over to cook the other side. 

     "You'll have to wait till Yahna to find out." He beamed on his son, yellow light crested behind him and the jungle came alive with the shuffling of the day. Birds chattered, monkeys howled, and the villagers talked and rustled and took barrels and filled them and carried buckets and chopped vegetables and picked fruit and fed pets and laughed and haggled and argued and babies cried and on the edge of the jungle an old man knelt in the sand and laid his head upon a log and watched the waves pull up on the shore and heard the water call his name, and he closed his eyes and thought of his wife for the last time.

     They grabbed their meat from the rock and cut into it with wooden utensils. Mahya grabbed for his pudding.

     "Eat your meat first." His father growled a whisper gently without looking up from his cutting. Mahya obeyed and cut into his meat. Tridder hid behind Mahya's black scraggly hair. They ate the thin meat that fell into flakes on their tongues. It was warm and melted like butter. 

     "Your mother wants to talk to you Oncoa." Anjah spoke only after Oncoa had finished his meat and was spooning his pudding. It was sweet and thick and he felt like a boy again momentarily transported to his father's hut at his mother's table, greedily filling his cheeks with the yellow swirled dessert. 

     "I need a nap." He responded finally, handing his half eaten pudding to Mahya who lapped it up without tasting it. It pleased him to see his son happy and fat, though Mahya had lost his baby fat over the summer and was tall and lean now, no longer a boy. "Mahya. I want you to go gather the heating rocks. Be back before I awake." Mahya looked up from his pudding, another ring of yellow around his lips. He wanted to protest but his father's stare broke his words and he nodded in compliance. 

     Leyah had barely finished her meat and root bulb. "Leyah you go to Canj's hut and help his mother with the chores. 

     "Can't I stay here and clean up breakfast?" Leyah was bolder than Mahya when it came to their father. He wanted to say yes, he never wanted her to leave his hut, but it was out of his control. The village had spoken long ago, and next year it would be her duty to continue the traditions of the village. The Ahcaha were here long before he and his daughter. And if they were to continue to be here, she would have to grow up.

     "No. Your duty is there today. Both of you go now." His voiced boomed kindly and they shot up out of their chairs. Mahya followed Leyah. He grabbed her pudding and put it on his head and Tridder fell in the cup. Anjah watched as they disappeared out of the hut and their branches dipped and the leaves shook as they swung away to other trees and past other huts. Oncoa took Leyah's orange bulb root and what was left of her meat and leaves and made makeshift sandwich and gnawed at it as he walked into the bedroom. Anjah followed behind him. 

Country's War

.7

Crystalite Prism

     

     The days passed slower with the lack of conflict. A fight here and there over someones hurt feelings on some percieved slight. The flies finally laid eggs, so there was maggoty bread to be had. They used saliva on hardened bread and wrung out the juices to make a rye ale. It had little effect on the older men, but the younger men got a bit giggly afterwards. Atryn was the undisputed captain, but he spoke little and said much as he stood up on the deck and watched the churn of the sea. A month on the wave and the younger men began to show signs of sea madness. Some began to talk to themselves, sobbing uncontrollably and screaming at nothing and no one for no reason. One stood against the gunwale and slammed his head against it. The older men had to restrain him.  The boy who had gone over board was the calmest of them now. For he had dealt with his crisis and had been saved. He watched the others sympathetically and tried to calm who he could.
     One particularly rowdy day, when all the mad boys seemed to be in a loony mood all at once, screaming and fighting and crying and yelling, Atryn commanded all of them to lay face down on the iron deck and sleep. Most ignored and the older men forcibly put them to the ground. Some of the noise continued, but it seemed to work for a while. It forced them to focus and take hold of their mind, rather than running about the ship aimless and free.
     Hard bread turned soggy in the rain. And they refilled their waterskins and finally bathed. Atryn lay on the deck and caught the water in his mouth. He tried to watch a drop fall from the cloud and catch in his eye. That was the calm storm. When the weather raged they huddled under the overhanging deck and held on to each other for safety, locking arms as the ship tilted on edge. The sea battered them, and the young men cried and wailed, cowering beneath the arms of the older men. "Hold on to me lad. I'll not let you go over." Some storms scream for days. They used the heavy armor to keep themselves weighed to the deck. They chained themselves to cleats for added security. Though Atryn knew the real danger. If the ship was turned they'd all be lost. Some ships would never make landfall. Were never heard of again. This was his fear in the storm. It was rare in deed for someone to go overboard, the gunwale was far too tall. Sea and skies churned together, pounding and slapping at each other, with the Iron Horde caught between, the men held fast, all protecting the next, until the storm past. And they always do.
     They began to spot seagulls, and they plotted to capture them. They used everything they had, chains and swords and nets and spears and arrows. When they finally caught one they descended on it like ravenous  raccoon, pawing and biting and ripping it feather from beak, until all was left was a puddle of blood and a few tiny feathers. That too was soon mopped up like soup from the bottom of a bowl. They were famished so, they hadn't even the sense to cook the damned bird, and make a real meal of it. They scratched and fought each other, for a handful of flesh. Atryn turned away during the massacre. For he knew that seagulls meant one thing. Land. He stood up on the upper deck and peered into the clouds on the horizon, the sun gray behind him, obscured and cast over by the stormed sky. He squinted and searched, perhaps one of the other ships would be near as well, for he had lost sight of them in the first storm.
     About to give up and try his hand at catching his own bird, he began to turn, and something caught his eye. A rainbow. Not in the sky, but straight ahead. And not really a bow, but a diamond. The more he looked the more it revealed itself. Like a prism, and stretched out and took hold of his sight. All light and object fell from his eyes, all he saw was the colorful specter, dancing on the horizon. He raised his hand to touch it, for it appeared as if it had boarded the ship and surrounded him. He wanted to run through the hall of the rainbow, and eat it, and let its illuminated shimmer envelope his body. He saw his eyes bulge and turn rainbow colored wheels of spinning bulbs. His hair painted purple and green, as he chewed on the walls of the crystalite prism. And he let forth a scream of joyous passion as he became one with the rainbow. And at the end of the hall he saw her face, wrapped in the gray shawl. She spoke to him, her face floating in the void. "Step Foot upon the land, and protect it. Shine your lantern in the night fallen jungle. Find your home, and they will find theirs."
     He awoke surrounded by the men. Night slid on a starless sky, and their faces were lit by campfire. They gawked like pumpkins against a black Hallow's Eve. He smelled the charred birds and they handed him a leg. He devoured it quickly and stuck out his hand for another. "You alright?" One of the men asked. "We thought we lost you to the madness."
     "We make land tomorrow." He spoke into the fire, his face covered in grease and meat and soot. He gnawed on a wing and nibbled the bone.

     

Country's War

 .6  

Army of Soldiers

     Waves. The waves never began or ended. Nor did they cease crashing against the hull. The chain rope heaved Atryn up and his armor sunk him back down again. As he was pulled above the waves he took a breath and focused his eyes and saw two thin hands jut between a curve in the sea of two monstrous waves. Atryn gathered his strength and pulled himself towards the hands. He saw the man sinking. The ship careened to its side and dipped, and he found himself near the man. He tried to dive after him but the chain yanked at him. He unhooked the chain from the cleat and held it in his armor gloved hand, and reached out for the drowning man.

     The men on the ship pulled themselves up at the gunwale to peer over. "He's drowned for sure!" "No one can survive those waves." "He was the best soldier I ever saw!" 

     "He was a softheart and a fool. Good riddance. I'll lead the squadron." Tarkys bit from a bread roll. The men fell from the gunwale and gathered round him. Parcleus clung to the side of the ship searching for any movement. Any hint of color or armor. After thirty minutes, all he could see was the thrashing sea. He felt his stomach churn the same. And he fell from the side. He sat beside some of his mates, and felt a hand on his shoulder and they consoled him. He held back his tears, and thought of the day his father did not come home with his crew. His throat chewed itself. The day he was handed his father's sword and armor. The very sword and armor he now wore. Had it been Atryn who handed it to him? That stolid summer night, when the air smelled of campfire and charbroiled husk. Now he'd never know. He laid his head down on the metal bench and a tear rolled down his cheek, that he hid from the others, and he hoped to hide from himself. 

     The sun oranged and began to fall, and the promise of eve's chill awoke him. Or was it the metal thud, that sounded like a heavy boot on the hull of the ship? Either way his eyes opened with the dusk and he raised his head and rushed to the gunwale where the chain was still hooked on the cleat. A few of his mates followed him. Their youthful eyes wide and twinkled with the amber sky. An uneven glow emerged, broken by the departing clouds, and bathed the deck in purple gold. The north star shone high above Parcleus' hand as he lifted his head above the gunwale to see Atryn just above the waves with the thin boy clasped to the back of his armor. 

     He let out a boyish cry, tears flowed from him freely now, as with all his mates as they climbed the wall. "Are ya gonna sit there sobbing, or ya gonna help us up!?" Atryn yelled, his voice bellowed as if he were the same warrior that jumped from the ship. As if this tale of heroism would not be told for generations to come. As if he had not taken his rightful place as captain, as general. Perhaps more than that. Not been promoted, but became, the leader of this crew. Nigh, of the entire army of soldiers. 

     As they pulled the two overboard men onto the ship and they all landed on the bilge like a pile of rocks. They cried and laughed and the entire boat cheered and kissed Atryn, whose beard and hair were soaked crimson. He spit salty water out from inside and tore off his drenched armor and the men carried him over to the campfire and covered him in blankets. The suicidal boy lay vomiting and choking and gagging, some how he was glad to be alive, yet remorseful that the sea was not his grave. The night wrapped them round the campfire, as they yelled and cried for Atryn to tell the tale again, of how he braved the wild ocean waves, and brought back the boy from death. The saved boy who would always be protected. So long as the story was told, and he was in the company of brothers. For this was the beginning of more than just the Legend of Atryn. This was the beginning of Atryn Squad and their many feats. Legend of their trials and victories would live forever. And the boy Atryn saved would serve as a symbol of their union, their bond as not only great warriors, but of witnesses to the great lengths they would go in order to protect one another. From no matter what the threat, no matter what the obstacle or how treacherous the danger. For after that day the love between squad mates would forever outweigh the fear of anything.

     They celebrated long into the night, and cursed the stars that hung round their heads like a blanket made of a billion tiny spotlights all fixed on the Iron Horde, that they had no ale. Suddenly, a ship that seemed a giant hulking mass to them just this morning, felt a tiny trifle under the gaze of the galaxy. A small toy in a child's bath, set to spin amongst the thundering splash of the boy God, whose fingers had begun to wrinkle, and whose mother scolded him for spilling soapy water on the floor.
     The young men fell asleep on each other's shoulders and backs, while the older men exchanged war stories, inspired by the days heroics to relive past glories and triumphs. Atryn sat exhausted, but warmed by the fire and blankets. His blood coursed, still enlivened by the endorphins from his hand shake with death. For as the men lifted his legend, only he knew how close he was to the end. What had caused him to fight the sea, to fight the blue eternally warring waters, he could not tell. Perhaps it was the life of the boy. Perhaps it was the plot of land he was due upon return. Whatever it was, he fought the urge to quit, beat back the urge to give in to the soothing song of mother's slumber. A song he knew well, the notes of which now sent shivers through his mind, an empty freezing cold that only the heat of the stars could thaw. But to see the men now, smile and laugh and full of spirit, he squelched the fear, and smiled too. Till his eyes met Tarkys, who stared at him with eyes not of hatred, or envy or jealousy, but of a kind of queasiness. He knew Tarkys had once wished to challenge him as leader of the crew, but now that spar would never commence. Atryn bested him not in battle or strength or even in wits. But in character. The test of heart and soul. A fight Tarkys could not win. Atryn offered him a low nod, and Tarkys replied in kind. Not out of respect, but out of duty. Neither of them slept that night.