Peacefall: Book Two of The Fourpointe Chronicles

Chapter 6

When plagues and wars besiege us, in their wake, what is left?

Songs of old sing of victors who emerge. The great. The bold. The legends. But what of the rest of us? Those broken by seeing the carnage of our kin, left to bury the departed and mourn until the black of our days. We become ghosts, haunted more by our memories than by the slain. We return home as warhorses, expected to relish in the safety of our pastures. Yet the darkness remains.

Our daily routines hide our anguish. We toil in the fields. We tend to the stables. We eat. We sleep. We rise. On occasion, whether prompted by a curious lad or caught in a moment of silence, we return to the disturbance. Yea, we boast of surviving. Yea, we tell of the win. We even smile.

But the true words of the soul are never spoken. The psalms of our loss never chanted. Even when we emerge from our nightmares and scream, we never give life to the horrors that plague us.

For all, for always, the suffering never ends.

Dawkin closed the book. He stared out the grimy window to the street and harbor beyond.

"Drivel," he said to himself. "No sense of verse or pace. Poorly-written prose. Dreadful."

He plopped the volume on the pile by the window sill. Musings on the Century War by Sir Keith of Kin Hadleigh had all the promise of a rousing narrative based on the first few pages Dawkin perused. As a knight fighting during the onset of the conflict, Sir Keith had battled in no fewer than two dozen engagements, possibly as many as fifty. The reason the Hadleigh veteran could not recall the exact number stemmed from the fits of madness he endured, with each one seeming to rob him a little more of his memory. Musings appeared to be written throughout the life of the knight, in chronological order, so that chapter one must have been penned upon his return from the war, chapter two a few years after that, and so on. By the fifth chapter, the knight managed to muse very little on the actual fighting, choosing instead to rant about his thoughts. Dawkin, noting he had not yet completed a quarter of the book, decided against finishing his read by a knight who no doubt had descended into madness.

"Poor chap," Dawkin concluded before reaching for another book from the pile beside him. His next volume, bound in soft leather dyed forest green, held promises of being more soothing: Dreams from the Woodlands by Master Allan Colgatt.

"That one's misleading."

Dawkin perked. The woman's voice had roused him from his peace. Aside from the shopkeeper, no one ever bothered to give him a second glance whilst he visited Sir Nygell's Books, let alone speak to him. He leaned over the left arm of his plush chair to stare down the aisle, finding nary a soul.

"Uh-hmm."

In clearing her throat, Dawkin sensed she had moved closer. But where? He looked up and down the aisle again before his gaze began to gravitate toward the bookshelf before him. There, between the gaps of the manuscripts of various widths and lengths, he spotted a pair of eyes staring back at him from the other side.

"Can I help you?" he asked.

"If you can lift a finger, I'm sure you can," she retorted. "I think you mean, 'May I help you?'"

Dawkin scowled. His servants at Arcporte Castle never addressed him in that manner. But in disguise, amongst the commoners, he commanded no such respect. The price I must pay for any moment of solace.

Let's try this again. "Perhaps I could determine if I may or can assist you if I knew why you interrupted me."

"It started as, how do they say, small talk." Her eyes disappeared as she shifted from behind the shelf. "Then I noticed you have a book I've been searching for in that tall stack you're hoarding."