Evaliir Aerasumé - She Who Bears the Charge

[Blissey]

I. A Knight in Silver

“Evaliir! Evaliir, come home!”
Her face is pink from the sun, freckled and besmirched by streetly soil from the lanes that overlook the river Rauvin. Her little bare feet plonk across mossy cobbles on that lane, quiet now as the sun fades fast behind the shadowy spires of the Nether Mountains. The lane is bare of travelers, of merchants and peddlers wheeling their goods to-and-fro as day’s end draws near, and kindly and homely meals draw them to places of respite. It is not uncommon for her to be called back so, the shrill voice of her mother’s frantic searchings give her no alarm, not anymore.
Her home is the little one on the farthest corner of Sunset Lane. It stank of salt, of fish and foreign spices and silks that travel up and down Rauvin. But mother kept a tidy home as best she could. The doorway swept, the flowers tended to, the glossy, stained windows vainly polished. The door hangs ajar, and Evaliir creeps in. Her mother stands by the hearth, her arms crossed and her face harsh and contorted. Her father stands there too, a large sack carried over his shoulder that distended in corners, sharp and hard – like armour and weapons lay within.
“Why do you mourn for me?” He says, bitter and narrow are his words.
“Because you are no man of war. You know fish, you know only to catch and to salt the meat. What do you know of war?” Evaliir did not yet enter. She knew that when mother and father bickered, she should stay well away. Though, close enough to hear what it was that angered them. She knew a great many things they bickered of; their marriage, their love, their parents, of the way the hearth and home should be. Sometimes even of Evaliir. The little Evaliir talks little because of this, in a home where scant few sweet things were said, the young heart of hers oft had little to add for she held no bitterness in her heart. She was far too young for it.
“It is a good and noble thing,” He protests, throwing up his hands and letting the sack fall with a metallic clunk, “To serve Silverymoon is the highest honour.”
“Did the men say that? On the wharf? The drunken fools that they are. What do they know of honour? They know of fish, just as you.” Evaliir knew often that it is her mother that crosses a line that ends all bickering. Father often did not have the strength to carry it on, most of the time. Evaliir felt that was that, that mother’s stern words would not be heard and father would do as he wished – yet again. But his hand rose, and struck mother to the ground. Evaliir crept just a bit further behind the door. She hears her whimper on the ground, biting back tears and sobs. Her father turns and grasps the ajar door, and there he spies the spying Evaliir. Father knelt, and cups his hand on her pale, freckled cheek. She looks in his eyes and sees the facade of every warrior; fear and pride that sat together in a strange queerness that betrayed noble ends.
“I am off to fight. Will you give your father a worthy goodbye?” But her eyes were glossy, pale blue and the whites turned greyer as tears came. She stands on the tips of her toes, and kisses the end of father’s hawkish nose. He lets out a gruff hum, and strokes the top of her head in that same fond way he always does. He stood straight then, and cast no gaze back as he lugged the sack of arms and armour down the cobbled lane that connected to their little home on the corner of Sunset Lane. Evaliir hugs the doorway and wonders to herself, in her little heart, why in her quietness she lets this happen.
If she could summon words to bring him back, why did she not then? She knew the words, what she should say, what would make father rethink to return and take her in his arms and sit by the hearth, to eat and to smile and to cherish one another as any family would. Evaliir turns and sits by the hearth, three bowls filled with a warm fishy stew. Mother was gone. So Evaliir sat alone, by the hearth that grew queerly cold. She ate and let herself be warmed by the fare, until she said, as words came to her finally, ghostly and pale and hollow, “Come home, father.”

 

[Blissey]

II. A Knight in Silver

“Captain,” Lieutenant Broscharn stood taken aback, “We did not expect you today.”
Evaliir dons her silvered and gold trimmed breastplate, latching the straps and ensuring a tightness so taut that she could scarcely breathe. She shoots a pointed stare at Broscharn who blinks and scatters his own gaze leftwards. It is a look that cuts, so whispers all those ranked below her who receive her commands. The two began to walk along Silverymoon’s battlements, along the tower riding high was a flag that bears the charge and heraldry of the Knights in Silver. “I had just presumed–” Broscharn is cut off by his superior, “You had presumed what, Lieutenant? That I would take the day to mourn?” Broscharn hung his head and plods along, keeping up pace with Evaliir’s unceasingly restless stride. Broscharn served as Evaliir’s page since he was a young boy. A piggish Human boy, Evaliir had drilled into him a stern and resolute discipline to all those he commanded in her stead. But alone, he was but a page again – second-guessing himself, tripping over his words, almost frightened of her. She thought this was endearing, and she would have quipped that it was – made a jape of it and his manner, but she could not find humour today
“The dead have nothing to say to me, Lieutenant. Nor I to them, for they would be words lost to wind, and I do not waste words,” Her lips twist uneasily, and so she turns as usual to the day’s most pressing matter; word of a looming raid ‘pon Rauvinwatch Keep, “What is the news then, Lieutenant?”
“Scouts have sighted thirty-dozen Orcs marching across the Moonlands, presumably from the Glimmerwood. A surviving mercenary reported they had savaged numerous caravans headed for Citadel Felbarr. We have a company awaiting and stationed at Rauvinkeep ready to command, and with the bolstering of a Bladesinger.” Evaliir stops in her tracks, and like a harshly blown stone, she shifts on her heels that grate on the stone of the battlements and faces Broscharn with her usual intensity – ruffled more by the day’s bad news that seems to be mounting, “Bladesinger? What Bladesinger? Why?”
“Ruehnar Norjor, ma’am. A Bladesinger from Suldanessellar, here to rally the Elves against their enemies. He comes by order of Queen Ellesime,” Broscharn stammers back in reply, his eyes tight with fear that punishment would come. Evaliir only tightens her brow, the scowl settling in. She had no taste for heroics, least of all the heroes sung of in tales – often they were less than all the stories had to tell of them. Her taste for them had soured so bitterly after meeting one that hailed from Evermeet, a boyish noblesse who she had wondered how he had even been given the privilege to even hold the honour of Bladesinger given that he could scarcely meet her gaze. That same Bladesinger died in a pool of his own piss and blood after being savaged by three Orcs. Evaliir had carried his corpse back to Silverymoon herself, and still the bards sang of his ‘heroics’. Words are wasted on the dead, she always said.
Before they sally out to ride to Rauvinkeep, Evaliir hears a silken voice call to her as she mounts her horse. Broscharn bows his head in reverence, and she turns to see then the Bladesinger Ruehnar Norjor, “Hail to thee, Captain. You are well met, you and your company both.” Evaliir stiffly takes the reins and the white stallion twists and turns so that she faces the Bladesinger proper, “And you, El’tael,” She says in her flat voice. He cut a handsome figure, lithe and aquiline in face and body, brown sweeping hair tied back neatly with naught but a strand loose. He wore the colours of Suldanessellar, green and gold leathers and a gold-trimmed silvered rapier at his side.
“I also bid you my condolences for the loss of your father. Captain Theodemar was a valiant man, brave and good,” Evaliir winces, Broscharn notices and he very quickly finds somewhere else to be were it not for Evaliir snapping her fingers at him like a dog to stay, “He died peacefully, so I am told, surrounded by loved ones. Gods willing let that be the way we all pass.” Broscharn looks as if he may shrink into the ground, to form a puddle of mud that lies even below the hoof-stamped mud. Evaliir raises her chin high, and nary an emotion passes over her but the faintest flashings of fury. She holds her tongue, were it any other figure, even those ranked above her she would have let them know her mind of who Captain Theodemar truly was. How a peaceful death was hardly what he was owed. Yet instead she bows her head, and a quiet thanks passes her lips. They ride on to Rauvinkeep that day, and it takes only two hours to reach the keep itself, which has now been fortified by a company of the Knights in Silver. Not long after they had manned the battlements, armed archers, and donned their plate did they spy the Orcs riding over the ridge and directly towards Rauvinkeep. The Orcs had nary a plan, the presiding Captains had said. Orcs were a roving, senseless band of beasts that wished only for the slaughter of the weak to please their dark Gods and masters. But Evaliir had fought many a time with an Orc who seemed more than what tales had spun, for she had never paid much heed to tales sung by those whose blades were unblooded.
“You would ride out to meet them?” Ruehnar looks at Evaliir, puzzled. Her critics, those above her, named her hypocrite. For all her accolades were inspired moments of heroism, but she thought it nothing but strategy and cunning and so she waved off their critiques of her with a tut and a scoff. “Yes. I would. Our archers would harry their approach, and with a driving wedge on their flanks with our cavalry, and a swift retreat, they would route.” The captains amongst her knew of Evaliir’s skill, and wouldn’t question any of her methods lest they truly knew it was foolhardy. This, if anything, was routine for the Knights of Silver – clashing with Orcs at borders or keeps, or at small hamlets. This seemed no different. The cavalry was formed, men and women donned their plumed helmets and lances, Broscharn and Ruehnar amongst them. As the Orcs began their charge, hails of arrows rained down hard upon them. Sturdy creatures of hardened flesh and bones of near-steel, they weathered what they could, losing a few of their number.
Evaliir raises her lance high into the air, the pointed silvered end gleaming under the yellow sun mirroring Broscharn’s across the ways in the other cavalry’s flank across the span of the front of Rauvinkeep. With a great roar, the two-pronged cavalry charge advances into the fray, twisting around the flanks of the Orcish horde that rushes towards Rauvinkeep’s walls – nary an idea of what they would do once they were face-to-face with stone and mortar walls. Evaliir’s blood had risen, as with every fight, she moved into a trance. To her it was a moment of complete clarity, of thought absent of all else save for essential details. To others, it was akin to a berserker flinging themselves at an enemy’s number. Though as she rode, the Bladesinger thundering at her side atop their mounts, another bit of silver amidst the Orcish raiders glinted. Her eyes narrow. She sees in the hands of a rough, animal-skinned wearing shaman a long rod with two bulbous ends. As they all surge forth, the shaman extends the rod downwards, aimed and poised at Broscharn’s cavalry company charging on the leftmost flank. A singular beam of light, brighter than even the sun, shot from one end of it and silence fell.
Evaliir watches as the ground beneath Broscharn and his men erupts into white flame and black smoke. A great quake that shudders the ground and ruptures the earth, sending horses and men veering and flying off in any single direction. Her trance is broken the moment she can no longer see Broscharn, she barks an order garbled under the ringing of ears and men yelling around her. She focuses her eyes again on the shaman, and the rod is turned directly towards her. She cannot move. She cannot think. She cannot speak, because words are wasted on the dead.

 

[Blissey]

III. A Knight in Silver

“Thank you for retrieving her. You may leave,” Theodemar makes an airy gesture to the door of his chambers, and the knight that had ferried Evaliir there stepped through it, and shut it behind him with a dull clunk. It was not the first she had been here under such disciplinary pretenses. She could never quite remember all the details of the chamber. Rarely had she the time to look around, save for at her feet or directly at her father – were she to stand the sight of his eyes that weighed on her like anvils. She was the metal he wished to forge here, and like a hammer to yielding steel, Evaliir would succumb and allow herself to be made into something greater – even at great cost. Evaliir was young then, a newly made sergeant amongst the Knights in Silver. Her accolades had given her fast rise through the ranks, but much of which was done in unorthodox ways, often through the subordination of orders that ultimately reached the same expected outcome. Today is different. Evaliir bore the marks of battle, fresh though tended by healers.
“Tell me about the ambush,” He says in a tone that outwardly many would assume is indifferent. Evaliir knew that this tone is the bubbling rage she had inherited – made finer, more pointed, sharper and unsuspecting. His silence and whispered words were always more frightening than his raised voice. She swallows hard, “Mountain Orcs. They had ambushed our patrol and we retreated. Some of the knights wished to remain to fight, for they saw an advantage our commander did not. I pressed that advantage–” Theodemar clicks his tongue, and Evaliir flinches. Her breath and words are cut by such a simple thing, and it makes her blood both boil and run cold all at once. Theodemar’s greying blue eyes watch her, and she feels as if every gulp, every twitch or movement is studied, consumed and woven into the thread of words he would use to undo what pride she has in her duty. Such was the way father would destroy her and rebuild her, away from prying eyes. Do you not wish to be strong? Then allow yourself to die in ego and pride, he says to her then as he does now, wordlessly now with his eyes.
“Six knights perished in that ambush. How?” The indifference comes through again. Evaliir’s jaw tightens and clenches, and her words come garbled and forced, “We pressed our advantage, sir. Two fell in the ambush. The other four–” Theodemar rose suddenly from the chair, the chair legs scraping against stone. Evaliir flinches again, harder now. He rises and circles the table, standing just behind her shoulder. She can hear the blood surging through her pointed ears. She feels the silence against her, as sure as she can hear his own eerily calm breaths, “Two were slain when we met our enemy. We surged back against the ambush and slew as many as we could. We slew their skald, but it had killed Enslet. Then we slew their command, their leader after it had slew Amberis. Only four remained.”
“You went out as eight, and returned as two. You carried Amberis’ corpse all the way back to Silverymoon. Your comrades laude you as a hero, and they mourn the loss of their fellow knights as if they had died for a greater cause. What cause would that have been, Evaliir?” His voice is frigid now, and she knew then that what terrifying hammer blow he would levy upon her to sunder her ego and her pride would come soon. She is not prepared. Her voice is hoarse, “So they would fear us.” That is what the men say, that their push against their sudden ambush would have carried the tale of it back to their wretched hive in the mountains. But there were no living Orcish survivors. All who spun the tale knew this, but sung their heroic tales nonetheless. Theodemar did not even need to speak it for Evaliir to know it. He had summoned the thought into the ether, and Evaliir, as usual, felt the hammer fall upon her and the unspoken word of her failure wormed itself into her brain and made her face crease with an almost viscerally real pain. Evaliir leaves those chambers often with no real punishment. It was better then that the men believed that all those lost died for a cause, that Evaliir’s mistakes are accolades, worthy of the tales spun of them. Evaliir always found the darker, unused reaches of the captain’s tower best to go after her meetings with her father, Theodemar. There, she could scream so very loud, and none would ever hear her.
That tower still serves the same purpose. She sits in a dark, damp cobwebbed corner where old furnishings lie. Ruehnar’s rapier, covered in soot and blood, twisted in her hand. She had a long, gnarled scar from the leftmost part of her face, stretching up and severing the corner of her eyelid and her brow. It still bled, though, not as profusely as it did before. A shard of someone’s armour, twisted and mangled by the explosion tore through her flesh but her helmet spared her life. She wants to scream, and she tries, but all she can taste and feel is the fire and smoke that choked the blood and mud soaked earth. When Evaliir finally emerged, she was thrust upon with questions from her superiors which she had dismissed in a brazen injured stupor. Theodemar was no longer there, and the only hammer that fell this time was one swung by her own hand. It made her metal brittle and frail, yielding only once more until it would shatter.
Rauvinwatch Keep was heavily damaged in the siege. Nearly sixty knights died that day, and nearly all who partook in the cavalry charge perished. Evaliir strode across the infirmary where clerics and healers tended to the wounded ferried in from Rauvinwatch Keep. Three clerics stood looming over one man, and he was entirely unrecognizable. The flesh had been torn and burned away, almost to bone. Yet somehow, he clung on. His mind is now trapped inside a charred, rotting vessel. As Evaliir paused, looking down at his flesh, she saw the colours of Suldanessellar now woven into his bare, sinuous muscles, melted into it like the binding of metals. She could look no longer. Somewhere, even in death, Theodemar’s sordid gaze did not stray in finding her. She could not remember much of what transpired after the explosion. She could only hear screaming, the roaring of fire, of hooves trampling and horses crying out against their pain. She tries to call out to Broscharn there, in the chaos, and her words fail her entirely. They had ferried her stallion in via cart, but there was nothing left of it that she could recognize save for the loose strands of white mane covered in soot and ash. At best, she could picture the beast rearing up as the explosion landed – bearing much of the force of the blast and sparing her life.
“Lieutenant Broscharn?” She croaks, asking one of the healers who tended to the dead and wounded. She unfurls a registry, a list of names, much of which are crossed over. Broscharn’s is not. “Taken to another infirmary, ma’am. He suffered quite severe injuries to his legs. The clerics here did what they could.” She tried to leave, to find him but several armed knights took her arms and relieved her of her weapons – most of which had been broken, feebly clinging to their straps. She had been taken to a special council accorded by the commanders of the Knights in Silver. No longer was Theodemar there to shield her from her wrongdoings. They offered her a choice, amnesty for all that she had done in service to Silverymoon; leave, forever banished to never return to Silverymoon. To be lauded once again as a hero in the very same way she had been for all her other mistakes, or she could face trial for the deaths of dozens of men under her command. She could watch all that she strove for in nearly one-hundred years undo under the weight and words of magistrates and judges who had never once held a weapon in all their lives. She weighed the indignation, the looks of the commanders, much of whom she had slighted in some way, bidden only to give her this mercy by her mere prestige and merit alone.
She never did see Broscharn again. She never wrote to him, to ask how he fared, or if he had recovered, or if he was even alive and had survived his injuries. She would try again and again to pen the letter to him, but the words never came. Her hand refused to lower, to let ink touch the parchment and let words flow. She turns on the road towards Everlund, and watches the song of Silverymoon’s evening shine over her gleaming, silver home. Then came the shadow, the long claws of the Nether Mountains stretching over the city’s vastness as if even the lands around had delivered their punishment upon her. She had chosen ego in the end, her pride and her vanity. She had chosen the heroics she openly scorned, she had chosen to be remembered as a Knight in Silver that had served valiantly, that gleamed as brightly in silver as the city itself. She does this because she knows that the cell they would confine her in would not suit her. There, in that cell, would be no place within where all could not hear her scream.