Order of the Aconite
The snow was driving hard, coming down in great gusts from the sleet-gray sky and swirling around the four huddled figures struggling through the narrow mountain pass.
They held their green wool cloaks tight around their bodies, their hoods pulled down almost to the tips of their noses leaving as little exposed as possible. Each man wore matching brown leather boots that rose almost to the knee and a bow across his back slung over top of a bag. Beneath their hoods set in sharp faces were sharp eyes that kept a keen watch on what they could see of the path ahead.
The sky was growing darker with each passing minute, placing a greater urgency on the little band to reach their goal and find shelter for the night. Even hardy scouts need rest and cover from the elements.
The pass opened slightly and on the left side a shadow appeared that suggested a depression in the wall of the pass—a cave.
Uther, the knight in the lead, signaled to the others to head for the cave with a quick hand motion.
The rocky snow-covered wall of the pass opened to reveal a narrow cave mouth that was only chest high at the top with room enough for one man to enter. Uther threw back his hood, drew his dirk—he preferred it to his long blade in such close quarters—crouched down, and entered the cave with one hand on the low ceiling. Several feet inside the cave he stopped to strike flint on steel to light a torch. The weak orange glow revealed a low passage that led deeper into the mountainside before turning off to the right.
He followed the passage, the others shuffling and scraping close behind him, the sounds they made no longer muffled by the snow and open space outside.
He rounded the corner and the passage opened without warning into a large cavern that he estimated to be fifty feet deep. It had a dry and barren floor and the ceiling rose twenty feet into the air. Odd bits of bedrock dotted the floor and jutting rocks covered the ceiling.
Uther explored the rest of the cave, making sure there were no other passages leading off of it and rejoined the others near the mouth. The other three men were removing their hoods and sweeping the snow from their cloaks but kept their leather gloves on to protect against the cold.
Uther was a tall lanky stern man with a close cropped beard, silver flecks in his black hair, and a low brow over dark eyes. He sheathed his dirk.
“Is this it, Dagon?”
Dagon nodded. He was a head shorter than Uther and stocky with brown hair. His ears stuck out from the sides of his head giving him a comical appearance that complemented his trusting and sincere appearance.
Dagon pulled a folded and creased piece of parchment from inside his jerkin, revealing tough but light leather-studded armor.
The other two, Aron, a grumpy giant of a man half a head taller than Uther and twice as wide, and Stelan, little more than a boy with bare wisps of hair on his chin and a wide-eyed, innocent face.
Dagon held out the map under the torchlight. “This is as far as we got on the last patrol. It’ll be impossible to tell from the snow but we didn’t think then that the Waalwiks have been here.”
“Impossible to tell anything in this weather,” Aron said. “It’s so cold there’s no way the Waalwiks will be out in this.”
“All the better for us to be out when they are not. But don’t be so sure that they aren’t. They’re tougher than they look.”
Aron grunted. “They’d never seen snow before they came here, I bet. Don’t get snow down south where they’re from.”
“Sir,” Dagon said pointing to the parchment, “this is our position on the map.”
“Now that we have it confirmed, this will be a useful forward base if the pass leads around the back of the enemy position.” He looked at Stelan who was shivering. “Stamp your feet, son. It’ll help you keep warm.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Aron, get a fire going. Stelan, help him. And keep it small. Just a little light and warmth. Dagon, check the food supplies and give out the supper ration.”
Uther sat studying the small map under the torchlight. To the north a few miles from the base of the Ruan Mountains was marked the Breda camp, headquarters for the prince’s army, their army. Lines of communication and supplies ran back and forth from the camp up the mountains to the forward position high up in the mountains from which Uther and his patrol had set out three days before under orders from General Mullion to scout out the pass and find a way behind the Waalwik position. Several lines led out from the forward base on the map into the mountains, all south, all in the direction of the undulating, invisible, always-changing frontline between the two armies.
The Breda had never before concerned themselves with what lay beyond the Ruan, the natural southern border of their lands, believing that they were impregnable. But the two pronged attack by the Waalwik army and their red-clad hordes over the mountains and around them by sea far to the east showed the Black Prince of the Breda just how wrong they had been.
They had pushed the Waalwik back into the mountains but the war there was now down to a bitter stalemate of ambush and counter-ambush, of attrition without victory.
Uther’s mission was part of the effort to change that.
Aron and Stelan got the fire going and Dagon passed around the rations of hard biscuit and pemmican. The hard biscuit, dry dough that was triple baked to remove all moisture, and the pemmican, blocks of dried meat—in this case, deer—pounded into a powder and mixed with animal fat and alnifolia berries, required copious amounts of water to consume which the men drank from large leather bags.
Uther slung the leather bag over his elbow, tilted it up, and drank deep as he chewed the hard tacky bread.
Aron wasn’t eating and instead stared deep into the little fire made from the bits of firewood they had brought with them, a deep dissatisfaction apparent on his face. Dagon and the boy chewed their food.
Uther decided not to bother him. He already knew Aron’s complaints about the mission and could handle Aron’s challenges to both his authority and the mission as a whole.
“Get some sleep when you’re done eating. I’ll take the first watch.”
Dagon and Stelan lay down by the little fire. Aron stayed where he was, sitting hunched over watching the flames.
Uther moved off toward the mouth of the cave and sat down with his back to the others. In the distance down the passage the wind howled across the outer cave mouth making a strange moaning noise as it came up the passage. Halfway through the watch when the fire died almost to nothing Uther heard Aron finally settle in and begin snoring almost immediately.
He’d have to watch Aron. He needed time off the line if he could get for him. Uther made a note to bring it up with General Mullion.
At the end of the watch Uther woke Dagon then lay down near the others huddled around the dead embers but he found it hard to fall asleep and kept listening to Dagon shifting occasionally by the cave opening and humming a tune that Uther didn’t recognize until he too fell asleep.
Uther awoke to find Dagon and Stelan asleep by him in the dim light coming down the passage and Aron crouching by the cave opening itself, his huge form huddled down into itself against the cold.
They broke their fast in silence, each man thinking his own private thoughts.
“Let’s set out. We’ll keep going in the pass and see what we find. With any luck the snow will have stopped and we at least can keep our heads up while we march.”
Aron muttered something under his breath but Uther ignored it.
There was no need to scatter the dead fire and they each belted on their swords, long thin curving blades with round guards, the mark of their station as elite scouts.
Uther led the way back out of the cave and into the bright sun.
The mountain pass ran east to west and, although it was bleak and gray the day before, now everything glittered brilliantly, the early sun dancing across the snow-covered ground and walls.
Uther checked that the others were with him and then turned left out from under the overhang protecting the mouth of the cave. The fresh powder muffled their footsteps and every other sound the elite troops might make, no matter how small. Uther was aware of the stillness of the wind, howling the day before but now completely still under the bright sun and blue sky. A few boulders and craggy outcroppings still showed brown high on the walls but otherwise everything was blanketed in deep snow.
As they walked Uther became aware of depressions in the snow in front of him, depressions that looked like footprints but which had been partially filled in with snow during the night.
Perhaps one of the men had wandered from the cave during the night to relieve himself. It was a normal enough occurrence. But the footprints, or what was left of them, continued farther and farther down the pass and they were spaced a yard or more apart as if whoever left them had been running, running from the cave into the unknown reaches of the mountains.
A tight, sinking feeling enveloped Uther’s belly. There might be a traitor among them. Aron was the obvious choice. He was angry, dissatisfied but Uther had never taken him for one to be so disloyal. He could try to kill all three of them to eliminate the traitor but he wasn’t sure that he could take all three of them and when he was dead the traitor might then easily turn on the others and escape.
No, the best plan was just to let it play out because the existence of the footprints seemed to prove that they were right and the pass did lead behind the Waalwik position and was such a threat to the enemy that the traitor had risked revealing himself to warn them.
These and a hundred other thoughts occupied his mind as they proceeded through the pass but Uther did not have much time to contemplate their situation for as they rounded a corner they were met with a sea of red figures.
Uther, Dagon, Stelan, and Aron stopped short, hands on their sword hilts.
The Waalwik soldiers were completely stationary, sun glinting off the gold embellishments on their round helmets, bows at the ready.
Everything was completely silent. The only thing Uther heard was the sound of his own breathing.
“So, which one of you is it?”
“Oh, it’s me,” said a young voice.
Stelan stepped away from the group and walked over to the company of Waalwik soldiers.
“Why?” Uther’s voice cracked.
But Stelan didn’t respond, didn’t even turn back, and disappeared behind the wall of red.
“Sir,” Dagon said, “you have to get back and warn command. I’ll distract them.”
Uther almost laughed. “Distract them? We’re going to die, my friend.”
“I will but you don’t have to.” Dagon smiled. “Run.”
Then many things happened at once.
Dagon walked past Uther, his hand reaching under his shirt at the neck and tipping something into his mouth. His skin instantly turned a deep blue.
A voice from the Waalwik company barked a command.
A hundred bows lifted up to aim.
Dagon uttered a piercing cry and turned into a blur.
There was a moment’s hesitation as the soldiers struggled to find a target at which to aim, then Dagon smashed through the line and his sword stained the fresh snow red.
Uther stared. He thought he saw Stelan running through the melee, running from a nearly unseen foe.
Uther felt a hand grab him.
“Run!” Aron said.
Uther turned and ran, arrows whistling around them as the Waalwik soldiers not in Dagon’s path regained their wits and refocused on the goal of their ambush.
A few had run ahead like goats on the walls of the pass and now jumped down in front of Aron and Uther with swords drawn. Uther and Aron were ready. Their swords flashed out and dispatched the four enemy soldiers unwise enough to attempt hand to hand combat.
An arrow fired by a very lucky soldier struck Uther in the calf and he went down hard. He felt Aron’s powerful arms heave him up and before he knew it Uther was slung over Aron’s shoulder and tearing away down the pass, Aron’s mighty legs outdistancing the short southern Waalwik soldiers who soon gave up their chase.
In the distance they heard one more rending cry then all went silent.
“I didn’t know,” Uther said. “I didn’t know he was of the Order of the Aconite. I didn’t know. How did I not know?”
Aron merely grunted and they barreled down the mountain pass the way they had come to deliver the news to the general.
And still, Uther wondered about his now dead friend, his sacrifice, and the deadly power of the aconite.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, strictly a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance, perceived resemblance, or similarity to any other fictional works, to actual events or persons, living or dead, and any perceived slights of people, places, or organizations are products of the reader’s imagination. This fiction is the result of a partnership between a human writer and the character(s) he accessed with his creative subconscious as he raced through the story with them. No AI of any kind, generative or otherwise, was used in any way to write this story.