Pillar of White Flame

© 2015 by Walter Reimer

This is a sequel to The Gray Tower, which is a sequel to The Black Chapel. It’s not really necessary to read the previous two stories, but they provide important plot points and great yiff, so you’re missing out if you don’t. Just saying.

Art by  whitearabmare

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Part 6.



Pandemonium reigned in the square.

Panicked townsfolk ran back and forth, and scattered fights were breaking out. In the already tense atmosphere fostered by Gond’s writings, it took very little urging for some to draw the easy conclusion that one of the fox’s followers had been behind the murder attempt.

“Get down, you idiot!” Trasta hissed, yanking on Chassi’s left shoulder to pull him down behind the chair she was using as cover. There were no other arrows coming their way, she hoped. She felt stark naked without her armor. Some of the nobles had run for the Temple, while others had drawn swords and sought cover. Duchess Rolna had been picked up by Baron Isti, tossed over the bear’s shoulder and carried to safety.

That left the Earl of Repor, and the silly buck was deliberately exposing himself. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

The red deer buck growled at her, his right paw cradling his left arm. “We have to see if there’s any more of them,” he said.

“The House Guard is taking care of that.” As soon as the arrow had struck, the guards had charged into the crowd for the likeliest firing position. High Priest Saragi had been very helpful in pointing out the specific rooftop.

There was a stamp of iron-shod feet on the stone flags, and warrior monks of Luli came out of the Temple, shields held high in the standard archery defense. The Chief Censor was leading them, and the lion asked, “Highness! Are you all right?”

“I’m unharmed,” Trasta said, “but the Earl needs a healer.”

“Right. We’ve healers coming. Come along, my Lord,” and he held out a paw as Chassi stumbled to his hooves and headed for the doorway, bent nearly double as he ran with two monks shielding him.

Trasta watched her beau run to the door, noting that archers were guarding the opening. The adherents of Luli and Valla were sometimes used as shock troops. They relied on their gods, and were very effective with their berserk fury and unnerving shouting.

A Sub-censor in armor came up and crouched beside her. “The square is secure, Highness, and Thegn Stolipi reports that they’ve caught the archer.” The hound grinned humorlessly. “Alive, too.”

“I hope he’s hurting,” Trasta said. “Any idea who he is?”

The canine shook his head. “Not yet. He wasn’t wearing livery.” He got to his feet and stepped back, bowing slightly as Trasta stood up. “I thank Valla that you weren’t hurt, General.”

She gave him a gentle thump of her fist on his shoulder. “Her Favor, and Luli’s,” she acknowledged. “Now, I’m going inside to thank Them for protecting me.”

And check to see if Chassi is all right, she thought to herself.

There were still a few citizens in the square, and they cheered the Princess as she walked. Trasta waved and paused just inside to let her eyes adjust to the change in light.

“I told you, let me stand up!” she heard, and she saw Chassi struggling with a Priest of Rarmyni.

“My Lord, you’re – “

“Bugger that!” Trasta’s ears twitched. She’d never heard him swear like that before. Some of the nobles in earshot looked a bit startled.

She kind of liked it.

“I need to check something before you get this out of – oh, there you are,” Chassi said as he caught sight of Trasta. “Come here. I want to see something.”

“What?”

The buck gave her a cross look as he stood, wobbling a bit from blood loss and shock. “Come here,” he said in a cutting, peremptory tone, “and stand beside me. You,” he said to the Priest, “you look tall enough – stand there. Right.”

“What are you doing?” Trasta asked, even as she complied.

“I’m fairly sure that I wasn’t the target for this,” and he pointed at the arrow still impaling his bicep. He was holding the arm very still to keep the bleeding from starting again. “Priest, stand there, please – good. Now bow.”

“Bow?”

Chassi gave an exasperated snort. “Yes. Bow. Bow like High Priest Lefra was doing toward the Princess. Good,” he said as the cleric complied. “Hold that pose a moment. Highness?”

“I see what you’re trying to do,” and she stood beside him.

Chassi nodded, thought for a moment, then shifted his stance slightly and moved his left arm. He winced, but tried to trace the arrow’s flight with his eyes. Finally he nodded even as he sank back to the floor.

Trasta crouched beside him as the Priest grabbed his satchel of medicines and tools. She put an arm around his shoulders to support him, feeling him shake a bit. “Stay still now, and let the healer work,” she said. When he nodded she asked, “What do you think?”

He winced again as the Priest cut the arrowhead off the shaft with a pair of shears. “I think that Lefra was . . . the likely target,” he said, a panting note entering his voice. The assembled nobles and acolytes gasped as his words sank in. “The Gods were watching him.”

“Pity they couldn’t be watching you, too,” Trasta said.

He smiled wanly and wagged a finger. “Don’t blaspheme, Highness. If I hadn’t been hit, we might not have been able to determine the target.” He glanced at the healer. “Yes?”

“The arrowhead is not poisoned,” the squirrel said.

“Thank Rarmyni for that.”

“If it had been, you’d be likely dead by now, what with all your thrashing and gadding about. Do you want the arrow out fast, or slow?”

Chassi frowned. “How fast is ‘fast?’”

In reply the Priest grabbed the shaft and Chassi’s arm, and yanked the arrow free in one movement.

The red deer buck gave a pained cry that echoed through the Temple’s nave, and his head lolled a bit. Trasta held him up as the Priest slit the Earl’s sleeve open and began to treat his wound.

“Oh, so that’s ‘fast.’” He blinked and looked up at Trasta. He had a glassy look in his eyes. “You need to go back . . . to the Keep. The King will want to . . . see you.”

Trasta glanced at the Priest. “Don’t worry, Highness,” he said. “He’ll be fine. I’m sure that the arrow didn’t hit the major vein or artery, but I’ll send someone to the Order to make sure.”

“Thank you.” She prodded Chassi’s shoulder as another acolyte knelt to support him.

“Wha? Yes?”

“You lay still,” she said, “and we’ll get you back to the Keep when you’re patched up.”

He gave a soft snort. “I’m only shot in the arm.” His good paw moved to his chest and clenched over his heart in a dramatic gesture. “But I’ve been shot through the heart – and you’re to blame.”

Trasta glanced at the Priest, who was rolling his eyes. One or two of the nobles chuckled, and even the acolyte kneeling near her snickered.

The elk doe tweaked his nose. “Stop quoting old ballads,” she said, “or you’ll give love a bad name.”


***


Queen Falra practically threw herself at her daughter, hugging her tightly and kissing her on both cheeks. “Are you all right? We were so worried that – “

“I’m fine, Mother,” Trasta said soothingly, hugging her mother just as tightly. It reminded her of times when she was a fawn and needed her mother’s comforting touch and scent. “Chassi was injured,” she said, “but the wound’s not a bad one,” and she nuzzled her mother’s cheek before going to hug her father.

The King returned the hug and asked, “You . . . llove him?”

Trasta smiled. “I’m getting there, I think,” and she giggled as he smiled. “He didn’t flinch when we came under fire.”

Aroki IV nodded. “Shhtolipi reported,” he said, his words still a bit slurred after his apoplexy. He was recovering, but slowly. “City Guard. Dissgraced . . . for supporting . . . “

“Gond,” she spat. “Is the city under control?” Her father nodded. “Good. I only hope that fox’s trial goes quickly – “

“He’ll be found innocent,” and she whirled, baring her teeth as her brother appeared in the doorway. “He enjoys the protection – “

Meki never finished the sentence, because his sister launched herself at him. With his braced leg his balance was never good at the best of times, so the two siblings went to the floor with a crash with Trasta on top of her brother.

She started punching him in the chest and face. “THIS IS YOUR FAULT, MEKI!” she shouted.

No matter the fact she had two good hooves under her, he still had superior upper body strength. Meki blocked most of her punches before giving her a hard backpawed slap with his right paw that knocked her off him. “Shut up, sister. YOU flouted the Gods’ wills – “

“STOP IT, BOTH OF YOU!” the Queen shouted, and before both Trasta and Meki knew it the older doe had waded in, delivering swift hard slaps to offending ears. Clutching at their stinging ears, the two siblings looked up at their mother. Falra’s ears were down and her expression was livid.

“I will NOT have you fighting in front of your father! You KNOW he’s ill, and all you two do when you’re in the same room is agitate him! Out! OUT!” and she punctuated the words with sharp blows from her hooves to sensitive places. Trasta rolled away and got to her hooves, while Meki crawfished backward until he could reach a chair to assist him in getting up. “And DON’T come back in here unless you can comport yourselves like CIVILIZED people!” She slammed the door shut.

Trasta put a paw to her jaw, and noted dispassionately that there was blood on her fingertips when she examined the paw. She tried a step, and grimaced. “Damn, those hooves hurt . . . “

With a pained grunt, Meki managed to pull himself up into a chair. “Your fists haven’t gotten any softer, either.”

“Stop acting like a fawn. You’re not hurt.” She smirked. “If I had wanted to hurt you, you’d be spitting teeth right now.”

“If I had wanted to hurt you, you’d be dead,” and Meki laughed humorlessly.

“You can keep believing that if you like, brother.” The doe smoothed her dirty dress out and started to limp to the door. She paused, one paw on the knob. “Tell me something Meki. On Azos’ Name.”

He looked at her. “What?”

“Tell me you didn’t hire that archer.”

Meki looked surprised, then offended. “On Azos’ Name, I swear I had nothing to do with that.”

Trasta nodded and left the room.

The buck’s jaws worked, and he spit a tooth out into his paw. “And if I had,” he muttered to himself as he glowered at the bloody tooth, “he wouldn’t have missed.”


***


“Tak th’ road tha,” the serjeant said, pointing, “An’ ye’ll see’t Karbur o’er yon ridge.”

“Thank you,” Halvrika said. “The blessings of the Pantheon on you and your men,” she added courteously as she plied the whip and the dray-lizard started forward through the gate.

The road was well-used, made of stone flags cut and fitted into place. A slight grade toward the center of it ensured that rainwater or melted snow would run into the gutters on either side. A glance at the lowering sky told the raccooness that the drainage might be needed sooner rather than later. She pulled her hood up over her ears as a precaution.

She reached the top of the ridge just as the first fat drops of rain began to fall and the wind picked up. The sow pulled the hood a bit farther down and snapped the whip against the lizard’s flank. It hissed irritably and obeyed.

The rain, if anything, got worse, and Halvrika shifted her focus and opened her Sight fully. It made making her way through the rain easier, and she could make sure that the damned dray-beast wouldn’t go wandering off the road. While she kept part of her concentration on the road, she cast her Sight about.

The terrain on either side of the road had been carefully terraced and converted to farmland, the terraces flowing like the steps of a grand staircase to the valley below. Belts of trees acted as windbreaks and barriers to erosion. As far as she chose to See, the region looked well-organized and prosperous.

As fortune would have it, the storm petered out as she reached the valley floor. The pass she’d descended from was part of a mountain chain that ringed the valley, and the rolling hills acted as a further shield to the ducal capital of Karbur.

The city was built on two hills, bisected by a river. The larger and taller of the hills bore the ducal Keep, a stout-walled collection of stone buildings. The rest of the town around the fortress was not protected by a wall, but by a collection of small forts.

She paused at a wayside inn for the noon meal, aware that she’d have to make good time to reach the city by sundown as Duke Evoli had ordered. This close to her goal, she was impatient to move on, so much so that she nearly overpaid the innkeeper for the meal. Halvrika clambered back up into her wagon and urged the dray-beast to move a bit faster.

The sun was starting to just barely touch the encircling mountains as she reached Karbur. The houses and buildings were built of stone, with half-timbered extra floors if they were two stories tall or higher, and steeply pitched roofs to shed rain and snow. She drove over one of the three bridges that linked the town with the Keep, and reined the panting, growling lizard to a stop at the gatehouse.

The sentry was a tall fox wearing a mail hauberk, a helmet with nasal, and a surcoat in the Lem colors. He held a spear crosswise across his body and said, “Halt! State your business.”

“My name is Halvrika Hringurhali,” the sow said. “I am expected in the Keep by sundown on the orders of His Grace the Duke.”

The vulpine frowned, then reached into his surcoat and consulted a small note written on a wax tablet. He nodded and stepped aside. “Welcome to Karbur, Adept. The Duke is waiting for you.”