Eight

Eight left. Eight. I mean, how is it even possible? We had left with only a small force of sixty eight for we had not dared leave the fort with any more and yet here, right now, what had seemed unlikely now was surely impossible.

The words had been spoken,

‘Fetch help.’

A simple ask you might think but here, cut off in the middle of nowhere with most of your comrades slain, you might as well shout into the oncoming western winds.

‘We go,’ was Aidan’s command and I follow his every word. I always have.

Sixty eight. Now just eight. Death had followed us like a hungry bear.

Night was giving way to day and soon the men of the North would be upon us again. We would fight bravely but numbers would prevail. They always did unless...

We waited. I waited.

I looked across to Aidan, the morning glow catching his face, and he seemed mercifully calm. A blessing given the rage that had overcome him yesterday. They call it the blood surge, when anger meets adrenaline and all hell breaks loose. He’d taken down at least ten of their number single handed but couldn’t stop the slaughter of our own around him. Eventually they had retreated to regroup and wait for more blood thirsty hordes to arrive. Safety in numbers. We had gathered what we could, climbed to this summit, and now awaited our fate.

What is fate? Fate, I have read, is inexorable. I’ve never believed that because far too often I’ve made my own way come true but here, right now, I was beginning to think that all my roads had led to this final moment; my resting place.

‘Hold.’ It was Aidan. Movement was beginning below us. It would be two hours before they arrived for us. Rest and prayer was all we had left.

Fate.

I remembered again the lost days when a blow on my head had caused me to lose a week of my life on the bed of a lord in a castle in France. We had done him a great service and I, brave as a lion, has fought long and hard by Aidan’s side. Late in the day a hammer had felled me and they thought to see me die. Death though could not claim me. I lost a week though, flitting between this and the never worlds as my conscience sort to find the key to bring me back. Since then I often have flashing glimpses of another world, my eyes shuttered against lights fading in and out at breakneck speed. I closed my eyes now and there, as strong as ever, the lights were exploding.

And then the gift.

‘Here!’

It was Cayton, she as hard a warrior as I had ever known, fierce in battle yet more cunning than a fox.

We turned as she beckoned us away from the crest of the hill towards an opening in a giant tree.

‘It goes down into a tunnel and there,’ and here a smile took delight in her face, ‘water that flows towards the west and light too.’

Fate.

The eight, tiredness leaving us as hope took its place, made our way down step and dark tunnel till we arrived in a hallowed cave. Here all weapons and excess clothing were left as we let the waters carry us to our refuge.

Eight would become hundreds and all would be well.


To tomorrow, the blink of an eye, and a record kept.

A X