Chapter 1

2 0 0
                                    


"May the Six Kings be with you!" A woman cried over the din of trumpets and cheers as Hallvarder passed. With a baby at her breast she, amongst many others, flapped her delicate silk cloth at him; it had been lovingly embroidered with the House of the Bow and Arrow: his House. He smiled under the great, black bush of tangled beard as the evening sun caught it, making it gleam like sapphires.

"May they be with you too", he chuckled back.

Hallvarder Veurink, Chief of Clans, was as large as a bear. He led the warriors and sea of red banners and flags that bobbed behind him with their many steel broadswords, chinking and clanging in the rhythm of the downward march. More than four hundred marching men thundered down the steep, narrow cobbled streets of the Kingdom of Roskilde. They were all proud men, built well and strong. Each carried their own House upon armoured, bronze breast plates: Wolf, Mountain, Shield, Bow and Arrow and Castle. Hal smiled as he led his men, smiled in all the right ways, at all the right people. He looked calm, but on the inside his stomach twisted with the anticipation of a battle. His youth was fading and he was not as quick as he used to be. Hal swallowed the cowardly thoughts away and tightened his grip on the large, bronze helmet he carried: two sharp twisted antlers grotesquely placed at each side of the battered metal. He had seen men cower at his mere shadow with this thing on. He would be fine.

On the rooftops directly following the marching throng, a girl leapt from thatch to thatch. Agile, quick and as intent as an eagle watching a scurrying mouse, Katla did not take her eyes off her father until he reached the gatehouse at the very pit of the Kingdom. When Hallvarder stopped, she came to rest by a chimney stack, watching along with the crowd as the streets fell silent.

"Men. We fight for Roskilde!" he shouted raising his sword.

"ROSKILDE!" roared the reply. Even the castle at the peak seemed to echo back. Katla did not cheer; she felt an angry sense of helplessness before every battle that was fought between her own Roskilde Clans, and the native Incants, who roamed the realm hundreds of feet below. The battles could last hours or days, and they were usually bloody and brutal. She had not forgotten the last battle; her father had come back with a poisoned arrow tip embedded in his shoulder. Of course the men all laughed about it now, the heads of each Clan would slap each other merrily at every feast and re-tell the story with great humour and vigour. But Katla could never shake the fear from her gut of that night, when she watched the beady sweat drip off his clammy skin as they forced the shard out; how he had screamed and how they had warned her he may die. Feeling her fear rise, she swallowed it back and as she peered behind the warm stack, she knew they must go. The native Incants were a threat. Growing in numbers they envied the floating Kingdoms of Gaar. They considered Gaar their land and the Kingdoms a menace, part of an unnatural process that was seeped in an ancient magic they didn't understand. Every so often they would take their fight to Roskilde's door, turning up with their sticks and grass skirts, as her father said, ready to destroy the wooden bridge that connected the Kingdom to the mainland. She sighed, but before her heart had time to grow heavy, a low whistle from the gatehouse walls broke Katla's thoughts. She smiled and waved. Piat Stout, a young guardsman, and perhaps a little more than a friend, had spotted her creeping like a shadow amongst the sloping houses. Since she was a child, Katla had always tried to outwit and out-skill Piat. She giggled as she reached to her raven coloured hair and pulled at her messy one sided plait. The red ribbon came loose and her hair fell gracefully to her shoulders. She whispered under her laughter.

"Hope your shield is strong Piat Stout!"

Made especially for her sixteenth year, she took her bow and an arrow from a leather quiver slouched upon her back. Years of practice enabled her to use them as if they were an extension of her own hands. Quickly, she tied the ribbon around the arrow and found Piat in her sight. He was too slow to react; by the time he had finished peering over the wall at the departing warriors and glanced back to her, the arrow was already whistling through the afternoon sky. Before it struck he caught the glint of it and threw his small shield across his face. The arrow hit with a thud and it struck right through, causing the wood to splinter and shatter, the point missing his eye by inches. He lowered the shield to see she had gone from the thatch. A prickle of anger, and then awe flushed from his neck to his cheeks, as he untied the red ribbon.

The sun soon left Roskilde. The well-wishers that had come to see off the warriors had retreated back home, with babies put to bed, and now moonlight, candles and lanterns flickered over the spacious Kingdom. The redness in Piat's neck could be seen reflecting off the candle light he held; it crept up onto his face like a rash, but now it wasn't awe, now it was contempt. "You have the beauty of a rose, the grace of a swan, yet you dress and shoot arrow like any mud soaked warrior." he ranted angrily. Piat's voice was hushed but stern as he spoke to Katla behind the wine barrels. They slouched lazily at the back of the guard's local tavern, a place they often met and, although she was being reprimanded, Katla smiled.

"Should I take that as a compliment Piat Stout, or an insult?" she teased.

He sighed, exasperated, as he checked they were still alone. A drunk emerged from the tavern and walked on down the street; he was no threat to finding them in their forbidden, un-chaperoned company.

"Times are changing Katla. I am to begin training as a Clan protector. I hope to fight alongside your father and mine soon!" He said proudly.

She did not react.

"Katla. It is a good thing. Perhaps I will prove myself and ask for your hand?"

This made her laugh "Ha, Piat Stout, first son of Renai. The Clan of Maynard, to wed the Clan of Adalard." She picked at the red and gold embroided shield on his shoulder. "The shield and the arrows", she mused.

Piat felt the anger prickle again, "There is no shame in shield and arrows, rather in arrows and crown!"

Katla took her fingers off his coat of arms. He was speaking about the rumours of a betrothal to Thornic Raak, Prince of Thurlstone. It was seen as a great outrage that the Chief of Clans daughter would be considered to marry out of the Clans, outside Roskilde even, and into another Kingdom.

"I'm sorry," Piat said, "I didn't mean to."

"Yes you did Piat. But it's fine."

He suddenly grabbed both her hands and squeezed them. "Say you'll marry me if your father doesn't send you to Thornic."

Katla pulled away, turning her head into the shadows. Oddly enough, her thoughts were not of the question, but of the name the villagers called her: 'The rose bush', something beautiful amongst an awkward tangle. One man had once shouted it out in his drunken state, and Katla had fought to stop her father from cutting out his tongue.

"Piat," she sighed, "I've seen you with the other girls, the girls that wear the long linen dresses. The girls that sit with seven babes in their arms while cooking the chickens on an open fire, dreaming of silken gowns and silver rings. That's not me!"

"Perhaps in time, that will be you Katla. But I don't care, it's you I love."

She laughed again, "Love Piat? What do we know of love? Stop this foolishness!"

He stood up straight and proud, his whole body rigid with anger "No man could love you Katla Veunrink. You have your uncle's ways!" he spat.

Katla rolled her eyes; it was a line that was meant to offend, but she felt nothing but annoyance as he clambered over the barrels and back towards the street.

"Piat!" she called. He paused, chain mail clanging with his movements.

"What?"

"My ribbon please."

Remembering her earlier display only made his anger clearer. He pulled the ribbon from beneath his mail and threw it down where he stood, before storming off into the night. Perhaps she had gone too far she thought, and then she smiled again.

Kingdoms of Caelum; Autumn of the War QueenWhere stories live. Discover now