Sons of the Oak

The longboat cast off, water lapping at its sides, and thudded against the cavern wall. Fallion’s wounded hand still hurt, and he had to wonder at his own bravado.

He peered around at the other children hidden among the crates. Their eyes were still bright in the torchlight, and their faces frightened.

In the mornings and evenings, when the guards traded shifts at the castle, they would hail each other, raise their blades to their foreheads, and salute one another.

Fallion now drew his own blade, turned first to Rhianna, then to Talon, then to Jaz, and softly spoke the oath, “Sworn to defend.”

It was more than mere words to Fallion, more than idle comfort that he offered. It was a bond that he knew would have to define him for as long as he lived.

Rhianna studied him. She had seen her mother’s trinkets stolen, along with her most beloved possession, her horse. Her mother had taken counterfeit coins in trade. She’d been lied to and hurt and used by men who professed love. Finally, she had been hunted down and killed by the man who professed to love her most.

Never trust anyone. It was a promise that Rhianna had made to herself long ago. But sometimes, she found, you had to trust people a little.

Could Fallion be one of these people? she wondered. We’ll see…

Rhianna saluted him with her own dirk, and Jaz likewise, while Talon merely gave him a determined look and clutched baby Erin to her chest as each of them said in turn, “Sworn to defend.” Even the little ferrin Humfrey, excited to see so many drawn blades, leapt up with his sharp knitting needle and chirped a single word, “Kill!”

And it was done. The guard Hadissa turned back, looked at Fallion and the other children, smiling, and at first Fallion imagined that the dangerous little man was laughing at them, as if it were child’s play, but then he saw a gleam of approval in the assassin’s dark eyes. Hadissa smiled because he understood. They were children no more, for the four of them were sworn as one.

The longboat caught the current and slid from the docks into the darkness so that suddenly they were in shadow. Fallion could not see the faces of the other children at all.

He peered forward as the boat glided past pillars of dripping limestone into the oily darkness. Everyone fell silent. Water dribbled from the ceiling, so that silver notes plinked magically all around. There was nothing to hear but the sounds of the boat and the small sounds of children breathing, and there was little to smell.

In the utter darkness, Fallion felt that he was sliding away from his old life, into a new one, and there was little that he could take with him. He caught himself falling asleep and, raising his head, decided to practice an old trick that Waggit had taught him.

“Remember this day,” Waggit had said. “Hold it in your mind for half an hour before you go to sleep, and the lessons that you have learned will remain with you for a lifetime.”

So Fallion tried to hold the day in his mind, recall all of his lessons. At the widow Huddard’s cottage, he had learned that a Runelord’s art was to learn to see the value hidden in others, and to then mold men and use them as tools. So he swore that he would seek to understand others, to recognize their hidden assets and help them become the best that they could be.

He had also learned that he was to flee to a hard land, and that he could thrive there if he worked. He swore to himself to work hard.

Then he had met Rhianna, and Fallion wondered if his father had sent him to save her.

She could be important to my future somehow, he thought.

And from Borenson and his mother, Fallion learned that he had had powerful enemies even before he was born, and that he had come to this world with a purpose, one that he still did not understand.

Sir Borenson secretly hoped that Fallion would lay hold on the world, claim the throne of every evil lord and usurper, but his mother was afraid for him to even think that way.

And then Fallion had faced Asgaroth, who also hoped to lay hold on every throne, and he would do so using terror as his weapon.

It seemed a great deal to hold in one small mind. Fallion thought about these things and realized that yesterday he had been a child, hunting for shiny stones beside the streambeds and lifting up logs by the mill to look for mice.

Now, he had fallen into affairs far beyond his ability to understand.

Jaz crouched beside Fallion, his breath coming ragged, and whispered, “I wish that they would have let us fly.”

Fallion smiled. So now Jaz wanted to fly?

Fallion felt trapped here on the boat, too.

“Did you see the snails on the bottom of the boat?” Fallion asked, wanting to comfort Jaz. Jaz loved just about any animal, and Fallion knew that talking about such things would distract Jaz from his fears.

“Snails?” Jaz asked.

“Big ones,” Fallion whispered, “big pale ones.” Fallion had seen one under the hull, the yellowish brown of ground mustard. He’d tried to reach down to catch it, but the water was so cold that it bit, and so clear that the snail was farther away than it looked.

“I saw a fish, I think,” Jaz said, “a shadow in the water. Did you know these caves were here?”

“No,” Fallion whispered.

Hadissa turned, hissed through his teeth, a sign for them to be quiet.

Hadissa came with us, Fallion thought, and he took some comfort in that. Hadissa had been an assassin, the grand master of the Muyyatin, and thus it was rumored that between his training and endowments he was the most dangerous man in the world.

So it was that the boat jostled down its dark course, until at last there was a thin light ahead, and the boat neared a curtain of ivy. Jaz suddenly threw his arms around Fallion and squeezed, trembling with fear.

I’ll take care of you, Fallion promised silently, hugging his brother.

Because Iome had taken endowments of metabolism, she bore her two sons only four months apart. Though he was only four months older than Jaz, Fallion was the larger and the smarter. It was Fallion’s self-appointed duty to watch over Jaz.

Rhianna reached out and clutched Fallion’s leg, and he patted her hand.

The dry vines hissed over the canvas roof as they passed beneath the mouth of the cave and rode out under the stars.

Fallion peered up through the flaps of the tarp.

This was the most dangerous moment, for they came out in a narrow gorge with steep canyon walls, into cold night air that smelled thickly of hoary woods and bitter pine bark-the kind of woods that the strengi-saats seemed to like.

The stars burned brightly through a thin haze that lumbered over the water. A reedy breeze wound down the canyon, lightly stirring the air, which was so heavy with water that Fallion could nearly drink from the air alone.

Fallion’s heart hammered, and he peered about, watching for shadows flitting by.

Humfrey came and snuggled against Fallion’s chest, his paws wet from the deck, and Fallion reached down and scratched the ferrin’s chin.

They rode quietly for several moments, and he remembered a boating trip that he had taken with his mother on the River Wye when he was five.

The sky had been pristine blue and the day warm, with dragonflies darting above the water and perch leaping after them. Mallards had flown up from the cattail rushes, quacking loudly to draw attention away from their nests, and Fallion had watched a mother muskrat paddle past the boat with fresh grass in her mouth for her young, and had watched a water shrew bob up from the surface and crouch on a rock to eat a crayfish.

It was one of his best and brightest memories, and as he lay back down in the boat now, he tried to pretend that this trip was like that one.

There are turtles that live on this river, Fallion reassured himself, imagining how they would sit sunning on logs, like muddy rocks, until you got too close.

And in the springtime the frogs probably sing so loud that you couldn’t sleep if you wanted to. And I’ll bet that there are river otters here that slide down muddy trails into the water, just for fun.

Fallion was just beginning to think that they had come through safely when he heard a sound up in the trees like rolling thunder: the snarl of a strengi-saat.