Late one night, they stared up and traced together the images in the heavens of Cormac the Hero who fought the Erde-Wyrm (a wingless-dragon) by the name of Gralchayachus for possession of the Stone of Destiny. Achaius the Warrior-King, who rallied the divided peoples of Caledonia together along with some of those of Norwend to the north of the Caled kingdom, and brought them overseas to fight by Aemiliemagne, the Emperor’s side. The starry-image of him was of his fateful battle with the Dark Elf general Morrion the Wicked, who fell to his great-axe. These along with the image of the Thistle-King, Siomon’s marriage to Marthe of Gallia, whom he was said to have fallen in love with, from the moment she stepped down from the great-ship that had carried her to Sgain.

  These were but some of the tales passed down to the children, with Salmon being the one who had passed down this knowledge, claiming as he did so at the time that the; “The stars change often, doing so according to the gods’ whims and whenever there has been a great or majestic deed done.”

  Inga at the time of the night in question had remarked, to him with a wide smile, “They say that the stars are different upon the Continent!” He did not answer at once, being uncertain of how to best respond, for he had never heard of that. When she saw his uncertainty, she clarified, “I heard so from Corin, who said that the stars in his lands form the shapes of Aemiliemagne, with some of the deeds including Roland blowing into his mighty war-horn and Norbert the Intrepid battle with the dragon that took his life, and even éluan the Golden’s defeat of the fire-wyrm Mydan.”

  She had spoken at that moment of Roland and Norbert the Paladins, and of the descendant of Aemiliemagne, éluan the Golden-King, greatest of the line of the great Emperor with such familiarity that he had chortled a little. Teasing her lightly, he had pulled her close to him, “When did you become a scholar?”

  “O do not tease me so Indulf, for you know I have always been the finest scholar in Glasvhail,” She had jested only to add with a snigger, “Save perhaps Cormac.”

  “Save Cormac,” He had agreed with a touch more seriousness.

  This had spurred her to giggle a touch more, before she became serious once more also, it was as they stared once more upon the great star-formations that she had murmured. “If the stars form such different shapes, in Gallia what sort do you think they form in the lands of South-Agenor, or over in the Elvish lands far beyond the eastern mountains of Magyon?”

  “I do not know.”

  “What of the songs of old of the old hound Féavonoé and the Elf-prince? Or the songs of the Elf-bard who wed the lady of the Zulvrain,” Inga had burst out, with glittering blue eyes which were always laughing joyously and filled with love every moment they settled upon him. This had never failed to make his heart beat fast, his cheeks redden and yet it had always filled him with peace, with joy. Their shared interest in Elf-songs was something discouraged by most in Glasvhail and doubtlessly Kenna or Freygil would have frowned upon it. However, some such as Corin, the Salmon and Ida were always keen to share what they had heard or knew of, with the younger generation.

  “What of the song of the love between the Elf-prince and the Rose-King’s daughter?” This was a favourite of his that Corin had sung long ago, when he was very young to Olith, Daegan’s gentle mother.

  Inga had sighed, and after she had teased him for being so romantic, had lain her head upon his shoulder with a murmur,” I would like just once to meet one of the elder-folk. To wear one of their dresses, and sing amongst them alongside Dae and you.”

  *****

  Thus, was his dream to one day meet an Elf, it was one that neither of them had ever spoken of to anyone. It had been their secret. The love for the stars and the dream of one day meeting an Elf, to hear more of their songs and to know them better was a private thing. It was the sort of secret others might not have understood, and so it was for this reason that Indulf was so keen to hear more of Wulfnoth’s knowledge of them.

  He felt that Inga would have asked, it was for this reason he cast aside his shyness, “When did you hear these songs and meet these Elves?”

  Wulfnoth answered him at once, “It was in my youth, at the time of my visit to the Duke of Norléans’s court. The Elves in question were of the Valdor, the mightiest in arms of their race and amongst the wisest, there was a group of them that had agreed to aid the High-King of Gallia in negotiating between them, the Temple, the Duke and the Order of Auguria. It was a momentous occasion, though I did not stay for the whole of the negotiations at Lynette.”

  “Why not? Were you not curious?” Cormac asked stunned by this admission.

  “I was, however I had made the mistake of offending the Duke, and feared him so. I know now that I should have been braver, should not have accepted Archdruid Félix’s counsel to return to Brittia, and should have remained in Fordéron.” Wulfnoth murmured sorrowfully, regret brimming in his eyes.

  Thoughts of the Elves faded, just as the discussion of the fey had before them. Discussion now turned towards the joy of the beautiful land to which the Caleds belonged to. The children raced amongst them just as the dogs did.

  It happened that when the canines hurried over to Cormac’s side, Indulf shrunk away from them as he was uncertain of them, due to their size. He had never much liked larger dogs, as they could be fierce as wolves and he still recalled being bitten by one when he was but six. Trygve for his part was given a wide berth by the dogs, for some reason. At the moment he was hardly dark in face and mood, rather he appeared distracted by his own thoughts and appeared utterly weary.

  These children, whom varied in appearance as they did in race; all the humans had fair skin, with hair that varied from flaxen, brown, black and red. Whereas the Tigrun, Minotaur, Ratvian and Wolframs were varied in fur-colours and hair most of which were the same colours as those of the human children. Only the Minotaurs uniformly, had brown fur or beige fur in some odd cases, mostly those of the lasses, not that the infants appeared to notice these differences. Caught up as they were with chasing the dogs or with halting the travelers to ask them, a great many questions; the children paid no mind to their mud-splattered appearances or the concerned glances of their protective parents.

  Most gravitated towards Wulfnoth and Daegan. One or two approached Indulf, who responded a touch more freely to their manifold questions. A shy young man, he was strangely more at ease in their company than he was with people his own age or older than him.

  “Where have you come from?”

  “Why have you come, to Ardrannaig?”

  “Where are you headed?”

  These questions and more were asked of all the members of their troupe (save for Trygve). Cormac preferred to shrink away, pretending that he heard none of their questions by paying added attention to the dogs, which all licked his face, hands and even his clothes. Whilst the dogs sniffed and wagged their tails at him, the infants rapidly lost interest in him.

  Why bother paying attention to one who has so little interest in you, when there was a druid and young fire-haired lass who both revelled in the attention the children gave them.

  “We have come from far to the north, to the southron lands to defeat evil,” Daegan boasted ever keen to appear nobler than she truly was.

  Her words though were not wholly untrue or so thought Indulf though he did tease her in regards to them. “Aye, though we have also come in order to evade questions regarding the burning of a certain forge.”

  “Something that a wicked phantom did,” Wulfnoth was swift to add.

  The children let slip many ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ at this clarification, which prompted the druid to beam at them. A man who deeply loved to be admired, and who adored children, he for this reason exulted in the attention he was the recipient of at that moment.

  Children being children, they believed without almost any doubt, though one Wolfram child quirked a dark brow at him asking as he did so, “Who chased away the phantom, you?”

  “Er-hem,” Coughed the druid who appeared a touch crestfallen at the question, aware as he was that he had had little to do, with the defeat of the dark-rider.

  “It was I,” Boasted Daegan to the amazement of all the children, throwing back her cloak a little so as to show to all the pommel of the sword girded on her waist. “This I did with the assistance of my fair father, forged by many a hands it so frightened the phantom-riders that they could hardly resist us!”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “‘Riders’?” Teased Indulf almost at once, “It appears that there were far more than, I was initially led to believe, Dae, it must have been quite the battle.”

  The sarcasm in his voice as always went unnoticed by the lass, in the midst of behaving herself as a true-born braggart. The tale she told involved not one phantom-rider, by now she had grown it into an unfixed number. By the morn’ her friend predicted that it might well grow thrice more, to somewhere approximating between nine and a dozen riders.

  “Aye, for there were twain as many, as you may realize it Indulf,” She said carried away as always by her own rhetoric, what was more was that he divined that she likely believed this to be the case (as always).

  “But wait Dae, there was but one,” Cormac said flabbergasted by her very evident lie.

  “Falsehood is a sin,” Wulfnoth echoed marvelling at the profoundness of her falsehood and egotism.

  “Bah, what would either of you know?” She demanded irritated by their attempts to rein in her bravado.

  “Aye, what could you lot possibly know?” Indulf echoed with a small smile, and a wink to the children that caused many a giggles to ensue.

  In this way, he had neutered her arguments so that no longer was she wholly believed by all. Only the most imaginative of the infants or the most obstinate might cling to Daegan’s version of what had taken place.

  His brow knitted together, Cormac did not take his hint only to be elbowed in the side by his friend which drew a wounded, confused glance from the younger lad. Wherefore he chewed upon his lower lip, then a nail before he turned his attention back to the dogs that continued to whine and sniff at him.

  It was Trygve though, who urged them on, gaze as always faraway. His impatience combined with the calls of the parents to play elsewhere or to return home, had the desired effect of dispersing the crowd of nigh one score children.

  The dogs were slightly less easily dispersed though they did eventually hurry away (if reluctantly), with Cormac gazing after them with visible longing in his eyes.

  *****

  The castle of Ardrandun arose in the distance seemingly out of nowhere, with Daegan the first to notice its sudden intrusion upon the horizon. The fortress was a stone-keep built upon a large man-made hill that had a palisade that encircled it just behind a well-dug six meter deep ditch. The palisade itself was made from cedar and birch wood and was seven meters high. Ardrandun’s fort though was not only shielded by this wooden palisade, but by a second higher on the ‘mount’. This second wall was a stone one that separated the fortress itself from the temple, the guards’ house and the second temple. The stone wall was a hastily built building that shielded the wooden-fort that was itself twelve meters high. The dungeon was high and wide, with three cone roofs atop three towers directly connected to it.

  The temples for their own part were both approximately five meters high and twenty long and wide. Both built of birch and cedar wood, one had the carved, white statue of Orcus with his high-crown, thick beard and long hair, dressed in royal robes and offering sprig. Where the other temple was one dedicated to the war-god Ziu. His symbol of the flaming sword, was carved into the wall just above the door just as that of Orcus loomed over his temple doors.

  This imposing building was just to the right of the right they were walking upon, with a small market brimming with life at the foot of the hill’s fort, just outside the palisades. It was there that cloth merchants, cattle-traders, fruit-merchants and wine-sellers had set up their stalls. Some of the stalls they could see were empty, evidence that those responsible for the utilisation of those stalls were absent and preoccupied elsewhere with their work.

  There were perhaps a dozen stalls, with twice that number of people out in force. All puzzling over, examining and bartering for goods or arguing loudly over their value.

  In the open-aired Glasvhail, there were no designate places to trade, as everyone went over to the home of he, or she who had such and such good, or commodity. The laird ruled certainly, but faraway and his tithes were played by the whole of the village, with the process of gathering the said tithe overseen by Conn. A poor merchant due in no small part to his gullibility and his wife’s innate sweetness, he had time and again all knew, inadvertently several times a year cheated Badrách of his share. Hardly an attentive laird, Badrách had never truly taken much interest in the doings of his outlying villages, so long as those closer to his center of power supplied the difference.

  This state of affairs was common-knowledge amongst his subjects, and some of his neighbouring lairds. It was evident at first glance that where Badrách had failed to properly maintain a steady hand upon his estates, the laird of Ardrannaig had not failed so utterly.

  “Quite the market,” Wulfnoth observed quietly.

  “Aye,” Daegan noted only to observe, “It appears that the guards are observing all who approach and depart.”

  “Hm-hmm,” Wulfnoth mumbled with one of his usual peculiar noises that he oft did in answer when he agreed with someone. “I daresay that they are a tad too guarded.”

  “A worthy pun if ever there was one,” Trygve complimented his sour mood disappearing if briefly so, due to his eternal love for such jests.

  “Pardon?” The druid asked dumbly.

  “Pah, guards or no, I wish to fetch a new dress and some fresh food,” Daegan decided suddenly.

  “Now wait one minute, young lady we shan’t tarry for something as unimportant as a dress, not when we might trade for one slightly farther south.” Wulfnoth objected immediately, a look of startled bewilderment on his plump face.

  His loud protests proved ineffectual though, as all attempts to restrain the red-haired lass tended to be. Breaking away from them, she leapt and ran over from the road before one of the stalls, of a particularly thin-looking Minotaur-woman who was offering up dresses and tunics. Her brown eyes lit up at the sight of Daegan, who began to examine one of the green dresses with yellow-trimmed spiral-knot so popular across the Gertruan straits in ériu. The beauty of the needlework was breathtaking, so that it was difficult to believe that the large fingers of a Minotaur could have woven it.

  The brown-haired cow-woman smiled widely her blunted teeth, showing as she pointed the younger woman to another dress, then to a bonnet.

  “We must hurry away, I should think,” Wulfnoth persisted only to be waved away by the Corin’s daughter.

  “Aye, how much coin do you have? I only have a few silver-thistles,” Daegan confessed to him, as the woman of her father’s house it was often her duty to manage the physical material wealth of the house. For this reason, the satchel with the few coins they had owned was kept in her possession.

  The thistle-coins were the finest coins minted in Caledonia, with the bronze-thistle equivalent to the value of a gold-lion coin. The lion-coins were produced decades prior and had suffered from continuous devaluation, with there being less and less gold, silver and bronze put into them until they had lost almost all value. The thistle-coins invented by Siomon to regulate the problem nigh on a century ago, was minted on a smaller scale and was originally purer. Over the decades after his murder, they had been devalued however not to the same extent, with the High-King Mael Bethad keen to restore their original value.

  “You have silver-thistles?” Wulfnoth gasped in amazement.

  Even Indulf stared in surprise, as he had not thought to bring that much coin with him, not that he had ever had so much as five silver-thistles. Five of them were a veritable fortune, worth five-thousand gold lions or five hundred bronze-thistles. “How did you gain such a fortune?”

  “I have ten silver-thistles, given to my safe-keeping by papa, and twenty bronze-thistles also,” Daegan boasted quietly to them pulling away from the stall to do so. Not being foolish enough to tempt the Minotaur’s greed with this revelation. She was still herself though, and could not resist taunting them over her self-perceived superiority, “Do not tell me that you have left all your wealth behind you?”

  “Oh, I have retained mine though I am not certain that one can price wits, along with one’s talents as a labourer and workers in the same manner that others might coin.” Trygve replied to her, with Daegan snorting bemusedly convinced that he had just insulted himself.

  “I have a few bronze lions,” Indulf admitted.

  “I have nothing,” Cormac said airily, his gaze wandering towards the meat-vendor and the delicious scent that wafted over from his stall four meters away to the left of them. “Say Dae, do you think we could buy some mutton?”

  “Nay! This wealth is for my dress, as my current one is torn and filthy,” She rejected at once.

  “But you already have your silken one.”

  “I left that one behind in Glasvhail, it is ridiculous to think I would bring a dress made of silk onto the road,” The blacksmith’s daughter said scornfully.

  Cormac pouted, his stomach rumbling so loudly that Indulf felt a touch of irritation rise up in his own heart towards his friend. They had precious little food left, which meant that they would need to buy tools to hunt with; such as a bow and arrows, rather than wasting the coin upon already cooked mutton.

  Wulfnoth maintained one eye upon the guards, who stood a short distance from the stalls. One of them soon vanished up past the open gates and up the hill, though the youths hardly paid them any mind. This matter would later prove a decisive role in this tale, though the four of them remained firmly ignorant of this fact for the moment.

  “Hurry lass, pay for your dress already,” The druid urged.

  “One moment,” She huffed determined to take as long as necessary, counting her coins with deliberate care. “I will offer four bronze-thistles for the green dress.”

  “Four?! Outrageous! It took me six weeks to sew this dress together,” The Minotaur objected with practiced skill, her people being every bit the sort of merchants Daegan herself was. “I say fifteen.”

  “Fifteen is far, far too much,” Daegan argued at once, scandalised. “If it took you six weeks, you must not be particularly talented.”

  This angered the cow-woman who turned slightly redder, or at least her beige fur appeared to, to the best of its capability, “I am the finest seamstress in all of Rothien!”

  “Pah, pah that is my auntie Kenna’s honour; your dress is good but nowhere near the quality of her needlework.”

  “Then why not wear one of her dresses?”

  This went on for some time, until most of the men began to grow impatient. Cormac wandered away a short-distance, losing what little interest he had in the conversation, Trygve glowered at the back of the lass’ head, and Indulf followed his example.

  Wulfnoth at last intervened with an expression of thunderous anger, “Cease this meaningless barter at once! We have lost hours of travel all to your folly now hurry along!”

  So saying, he grabbed her by the wrist pulling her after him in a huff. Daegan protested loudly at this shoddy treatment of her. As he passed Cormac, he seized the lad who had been salivating over a hunk of mutton that the butcher was tempting him with, a confident smirk on his face. His expression rapidly turned into an outraged glare towards the druid, annoyed as he was certain that the cleric had just robbed him of a certain sale.

  Neither of the two whose wrists Wulfnoth had seized offered much more than protests, neither of them being particularly happy with his actions.

  For their part, the sons of Freygil and Ida exchanged an exasperated glance, before they bade a hurried farewell to the Minotaur-seamstress who appeared perturbed that her own sale had not gone half as well as she had hoped, before they raced after their friends.

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