She didn’t apologise. What was the point? She was in her seventies now.
She couldn’t remember exactly how old she was.
It didn’t matter any more.
She shook her head in disbelief at how she had managed to become so very, very old.
She shifted her weight from her left foot, leaning heavily on her wooden staff for support.
G’ani was standing in the centre of a semi-circle of expectant faces, figures seated cross legged for the most part on the
soft grass, homespun woollen cloaks providing almost uniform protection against the evening chill.
The light was beginning to fail, and torches were already blazing around the edges of the small clearing.
She looked around at them all, perhaps to reassure herself that they wanted to hear her story.
Perhaps it was to check that they were really there at all. She wasn’t sure why she looked.
Tonight felt important, she felt a tingle of nervousness. Would anything that she said be of any interest to these people?
The walking of miles upon miles of woodland track had taken its toll on her aged bones. Her body ached for rest.
She’d injured her foot, tripping over a tree root a few miles away from here. She remembered hours, or so it seemed,
that she had struggled to rise up from that fall. The rain hadn’t stopped.
It had wept its lament in duet with a cruel north wind for most of the day.
Her already travel-worn garments, heavy from the downpour, had become even more unwieldy, liberally spread with mud
as she crawled this way and that trying to find a position that would allow her to get up again.
No, the rain hadn’t helped matters. Still, she’d had her staff, and eventually had managed to stand up and find her
way here.

The sight of the small cluster of about twenty or thirty huts couldn’t have lifted her heart more if they’d instead
been the outer dwellings of a great city. The people here, forest people, woodcutters and charcoal burners she guessed,
were hungry for news, stories…anything that was a distraction from the hard labours of their daily living.
Indeed, the residents of some great city would have barely noticed her arrival.
To have been treated with kindness wouldn’t have been a certainty, suspicion being what it is in cities.
Here though, in the middle of this dark wood the keepers of the trees and humble crafts folk had greeted her warmly.
They’d tended to her hurts, provided hot water for her to clean herself up, lent her fresh clothing and shared their
evening meal with her.

Now she was, in a small way, to make a payment. They’d asked her to tell her story.
It was a tradition that they kept with guests, they had told her. At least fifty people had appeared here to hear it.

Her smile widened, this time it showed itself in her eyes too as she dwelt upon her good luck,
silently thanking Lady Fortune for it.
She stepped back a few paces and lowered herself to sit on the stones.
They’d been piled up into a kind of makeshift chair. The “story chair” they had called it.
Between G’ani and her audience burned a healthy fire, and its glow gifted the twilight with an air of magic,
its light dancing from face to face.
“Anticipation is a magic all its own”, she muttered to herself.

She took a deep breath, and then surrendered herself to the telling.

***************************************************

“My father and mother”, she started slowly, “were High Stewards of the kingdom of Aresh, a land many months travelling from here, and across a river that sometimes looks as wide as the sea, the river Eln. They were well liked and respected, and worked hard in the service of King Edwin.
All my life they trained me in the management of resources, so that one day I too might become a High Steward.
They never told me very much about court politics though. Maybe they thought to wait until I was older, or maybe they thought that my innocence about that might protect me. It came as a surprise to me therefore to find that despite enjoying what seemed like universal popularity, they had enemies.

There were people who, rather than make their own way to High Stewardship, had realised that it would be much quicker to advance into a vacuum waiting to be filled. Avarice, jealousy and impatience caused these people to murder my mother and father. It happened just a few weeks before my seventeenth birthday. In Aresh a child is deemed to be capable of managing their own affairs at seventeen, and I would have inherited the position of High Steward under the tuition of one of these families. To prevent my accession, an intricate web of lies had been woven to portray my family as corrupt, and as far as I know even the King believed it, or pretended to because it was expedient to do so. I’ll never know now. I was told that I too was marked for death, together with any friends and family that hadn’t distanced themselves from us sufficiently.”

She could see even in the poor light that the fifty or so villagers were listening closely to her words. She was pleased that she wasn’t boring them. An elderly couple sat at the front, directly opposite her. They were flanked by a few more people about her age. She knew them to be the Elders that ruled here, though it seemed that “rule” was too strong a word for the organizational structure she’d observed so far. From what little she had seen, everyone appeared to co-operate with each other by choice. Most of the other folk looked to be somewhere between twenty and forty years old. She was so old now that guessing the age of anyone over twenty had become almost impossible, and certainly not to be attempted in this light. A handful of children were scattered here and there, presumably sitting in small family groups. G’ani wasn’t sure that her tale was entirely suitable for them. No doubt their parents would take them home if that turned out to be the case. They’d asked for her story, and she would tell it with as much truth as she could find within herself.

“I would have been killed too, had my cousin Art not convinced me to flee” she continued. “The same night that my parents were murdered we stole away into the hills with a few friends and those of our family that could be persuaded of the danger. We marched without rest until we reached the river and followed it south. Not until we found a place to cross it and be certain that we’d left the Areshi border behind us could we risk a day to recover. Two, maybe three days and nights without sleeping? I can’t remember exactly. Well, then we carried on for many months, finding food along the way. There were perhaps twenty souls in our party, certainly no more than twenty. Though I was still very young, I found myself leading a community, because my upbringing had given me some training for it and because no-one else wanted the job. I found it to be no hardship. I liked organising things, and I was good at it. We found some land rich in resources and settled there. We wanted to grow wheat, raise children and live in peace somewhere where the cruelty of the world would never find us again.”

The recollection made her smile. Those had been good days. Days of supporting each other, shouting at each other and forgiving each other. Working more hours than the day owned it had seemed sometimes. They’d had ten years of peace and settlement and healing. Truly they’d been blessed. “Our people thrived” G’ani went on. “Hearing of our success other folk scattered around near to our village came to join us. It seemed in those days that every decision I made was blessed by Lady Fortune herself. I could do no wrong. I became known locally as “G’ani the Golden”. Our fields never failed, our artisans never run out of ideas. They amazed me. They were always putting into practice techniques to make our woodcutting and building projects more effective. We were becoming rich as a community, able to sell our surplus wood, clay and wheat to our neighbours who also prospered from the knowledge and skills that we freely shared with them. Soon we were able to mine iron and improve our tools. Life was so good…so very, very good to us. We called our village “Ravens Peak” Yes… life was so very good then.”

She was almost there again, could almost feel the wind on that hill that seemed to be the birth place of the dark messengers that gathered there in hundreds in the winter months. Her voice was beginning to crack and fade. A young woman seeing her discomfort quietly left the circle and handed her a cup of ale. Gratefully G’ani took it, smiling her thanks. Something about the innocence of youth crossed her mind. Kindness without condition. Looking at the girl from a distance of four decades she wondered whether it was only the young that could truly give. Age had certainly taught G’ani the wisdom of bargains. “Youth if left to itself, simply gives” she thought.

“I was so proud” she told the cup that she was staring into, and also the people gathered around her, though for a second she had forgotten that they were there. “Proud of my people…proud of our village… proud of myself.” The words melted into the night and she moved her head from side to side, murmuring “no, no”, as if trying to avoid remembering where that pride had eventually led her. “No tears G’ani” she told herself, “You’ve shed enough of those for a hundred lifetimes.”

Gathering her resolve and her borrowed woollen cloak around her, pulling it close around her shoulders against a sudden chill that had made her shiver, she carried on,

“By the time I reached my twenty seventh year on this Earth, the population of Raven’s Peak numbered almost five hundred. The neighbouring villages also grew and we were able to trade further afield. We had probably been noticed because of this success. Soon after the harvest, a few weeks after my birthday we saw the Warriors for the first time. They came suddenly, many hundreds of them. One day there was empty land, the next they were there. They built a town a few miles away from Ravens Peak. It seemed to be completed so quickly, in a matter of a few weeks. It had white stone walls, parapets and looked very grand, like a small city in comparison to our wooden houses. We were all impressed by their building skills. I looked forward to opening trade negotiations with them. They looked so magnificent. They wore brightly coloured silken cloaks and gleaming armour. It was rumoured that they wore gold as ornaments around their necks and wrists. Our children would always rush to wave to them from the raven hill. They never waved back.

Full of optimism I sent a message to propose a trade of wheat in return for some of the brightly coloured silk that they used. It was a start, I wanted to open some sort of positive dialogue with these new neighbours. My merchants returned with nothing but a note from their leader. It was addressed to no-one in particular, though my message had been signed by me. It was very short. It said:

“I will not tolerate unallied barbarians at my border. You will arrange to pay tribute to me, I am now your Lord. Tribute is to consist of one third of your resource production. It is payable immediately. Refuse, and I will have no choice other than eradication.”

It was signed in a flowing and confident hand, “Kal D’Onet,”

It was very hard for G’ani to say that name. Even after all these years…especially after all these years. Yes, very hard indeed, but a tale is a tale, and she couldn’t shrink from its telling. Not now. Her voice betrayed her anger, as it had then.

“I sat with Art, my cousin, and my advisors and we read and reread the note, looking for some way out. There was none. No room for negotiation. We had no warriors, no weapons and no defenses. A wooden stockade surrounded the homes of Ravens Peak, but it was there only to keep out wild animals and to keep young children inside, where we could see them. We…I …hadn’t prepared for the defense of Ravens Peak. We’d lived a peaceful dream, thinking that it would go on forever. I sent merchants to buy weapons, arranged to hide as much of our wheat as we could in the caves under the hill and organised a guard of about a hundred of our fittest villagers. They were farmers and potters and not warriors. They had very little time to try to become warriors, but none complained, flattered to be chosen by G’ani the Golden. When the merchants returned with weapons I had the only army we could raise. I remember thinking, “perhaps it will be enough.”

Then G’ani for the first time was interrupted. An elderly man that she hadn’t noticed earlier stood up from the circle and moved to stand beside her. “Of course they weren’t enough!” he shouted “Had you really no idea at all of what you were facing?” Exasperated, the old man sat down beside her on the stone seat. He met the confusion in her eyes with a stern and searching stare. Then taking both of her hands in his, he said more gently, “You didn’t, did you? You knew so much about everything, but you knew nothing about war, nothing about real power and nothing about what it does to a person.”

She stared back at him, silenced, unbelieving and suddenly terrified into the brightly shining and unmistakable blue green eyes of Kal D’Onet. They were a tableau, frozen like that for a moment and then he released his grip on her hands and took up the story. “After she’d armed this bunch of farmers and traders I think she lost her senses, most certainly her temper. She rode out alone to my town, Orin. She banged on the gates with what I suspect is that same stick she’s still nursing now.”

“What are you doing here?” G’ani whispered, almost distraught. “How can you possibly be here? How can you… be here?” Her voice was fading into nothing as she tried in vain to answer her own questions. She could not. He ignored her and carried on.

“I was so amused that I rode out to meet her. What a sight! She was nothing like any of the women I’d been used to. No perfume, no jewelry and dressed worse than a milk maid on a wet weekday.” He grinned to himself as he recalled her long red hair arranged in no particular style, wild and tangled from the journey. Her grey eyes blazing cold defiance. “She arrived at my door in an Ox cart!” He chuckled to himself. Yes, the leader of Raven’s Peak had certainly been nothing like anyone he’d ever encountered before. “She told me who she was, and I did my best not to laugh. Then she yelled something about fighting to the last, swearing that Raven’s Peak would never pay Tribute to anyone. I let her finish that sentence, then I picked her up and threw her back in her cart and told her to pay me within three days. Then I slapped the ox on the arse and made sure she had safe passage home. My warriors were in high spirits for weeks telling the story of Kal D’Onet and the woman in the Ox cart in the Taverns of Orin. My popularity amongst them was never so high.”

He turned once more to G’ani, “You were very lucky that I was an honourable and chivalrous man. Many a chieftain would have had you killed there and then. It would have been the efficient way to deal with the Ravens Peak problem. I could have just taken over. Without you, they would have crumbled. Without you, they would have been nothing but serfs begging for a master.”

“I hate you” she growled, her voice low and full of venom. “I hated you then, and I hate you now. Why are you here?” She was beginning to question her sanity. So many years of hoping, praying that she would find him again and now, now that her life was almost over, he appears at what she’d thought to be a haven, a resting place, her place. He hadn’t changed. He was still arrogant and cruel. How could he possible be here, now?

Kal D’Onet again took her old, withered, shaking hands in his and raised her to stand with him. His eyes never flinched from her acrid stare.

“You loved me, G’ani. You loved me. I made you love me in the end. If you hadn’t have loved me then, you couldn’t hate me now.” On hearing this confident dismissal of her feelings, she no longer felt old. She no longer felt fragile. She only felt the urge to strike him, and more than once. He still had her hands tightly imprisoned in his and sensing her intention, and aware of her fury at being unable to act, he smiled and once again spoke his truth.

“You loved me, G’ani. You really did.”

Her eyes were clouded by tears that she refused to allow to fall. Her face was red from the shame and humiliation he was causing her here. An echo of what she’d felt years ago when she’d found out the truth about Kal D’Onet. The pain of that shame had been with her for forty lonely years. She ripped her hands away from him, her skin tearing as old, dry dying skin does. She returned to the stone chair, rubbing her hands, trying to remove his touch but it only made them hurt more. Absently she dabbed at the bleeding flesh with her cloak. He sat down again next to her.

G’ani had begun her story and she would tell it. No matter what he was doing here, and damn the why of it. This was her story. Her voice had found its strength again and she found from somewhere deep inside herself a way to carry on. “Three nights after I returned from meeting Kal D’Onet a troop of his men fell upon Raven’s Peak. They caused injury to thirty of the guards and killed twenty of them. The rest ran, shamed and frightened. They had nothing to be ashamed of, after all, they had no experience of war. None of us did.” Then swirling around to face him she screamed at him, “You killed twenty of my people! Twenty farmers! Where was your “honour” then, you evil, manipulating bastard?” Kal D’Onet met her eyes for a second. He nodded and then looked at the ground, making no comment. She paused briefly to regain herself and to quell her temper.

“They stole all the wheat that they could find and then left” she said at last. We’d managed to hide most of it, thank The Lady. At least we had food. I was sure that they wouldn’t come back, not for a while. They had what they came for, I thought, and I knew that we weren’t a threat to them. I was sure they wouldn’t come back. ” She turned to Kal D’Onet again.

“But you did come back, didn’t you? You came back, with your flowing robes and your bright shields and your golden wristbands! You came back…and you…you…” she couldn’t go on. Kal D’Onet finished it for her.

“I came back. Yes. The next day. I had second thoughts. I thought that if you’d managed to build such an excellent trading post, perhaps it would do no harm see whether your people wouldn’t prove useful to me if properly trained. You’re right. There was no shame on those who ran. It was the sensible thing to do. Those who didn’t run showed extraordinary courage in the face of a seasoned army. I was impressed. I thought about it and the next day I returned your wheat. I brought gold to help the families of your dead and injured. I apologised for what I’d done. I explained that what we’d done to Ravens Peak was nothing in comparison to what you could expect from the real aggressors that were getting closer. Oh yes, make no mistake they were coming! Then I taught you how to defend your village, trained your warriors, sent Smiths trained in fashioning weapons to show your own Smithies how to make them. I helped you to build the sort of small guard you should have been planning alongside your trading dreams for Ravens Peak. I kept you safe woman!” She tried to interrupt him, but he’d have none of it.

“G’ani, you became my closest ally, and I soon trusted you above even my own captains. You learned fast and you made me proud of you. A barbarian, and I trusted you. I admired you, I respected you and whatever you think of me now, I loved you.” She was blind to the sincerity in his eyes, deaf to his truth and numb to the longing in his heart, and to the longing in her own heart. Her voice was measured, but the rage that gave her the strength to speak was audible despite her control of it.

“My people became slaves to war.” She accused him with every inflection. We became producers of siege engines and swords. We grew just enough to feed ourselves. It seemed that every hand was needed to properly equip this small army that you convinced us was so necessary. Our children went hungry sometimes. On my orders. Mine! I turned a paradise into a hell to impress you, and because you made me believe that it was the only way.”

“It was” he replied gently, “Truly, it was.”

“And” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken “for all of your honey words and what you call respect, admiration and even love for me, you never told me about the wife waiting for you in Orin.”

“I…” he stumbled over the words “I didn’t know how to tell you. I had no idea how you’d react, you were not like us, You had different ways.” “Kal! Don’t you see? You made me prostitute myself and my people to keep your family safe! You used me, you used us all to shore up the defenses of Orin. We lost ourselves trying to be something that we’d never wanted to be, and I let it happen. I made it happen because I couldn’t bear to let you down.”

Kal D’Onet had no answer for her.

“So” said G’ani, calmer now, to the faces held in fascination around the still blazing fire. “By this time I’d become a feared lieutenant in the ever increasing army of Kal D’Onet. Now I was known as “Bloody G’ani”. My warriors raided neighbours and friends if they didn’t fully co-operate with Kal D’Onet’s orders. When we weren’t doing that, we were bullying people further away to create an even safer and wider border. I didn’t like myself very much any more, what I’d let myself become. I started to wonder why years had passed and no enemy had threatened us. They didn’t come, did they Kal?”

“No” he answered flatly. “Not then, not for a few years. Is that why you ran away G’ani? Is that why you and your people left Orin with no defense at its side when they did come? Betrayal, and long, lonely years of separation. Just because I disappointed you with an inaccurate timescale?”

“I ran nowhere!” she yelled at him. They both knew that wasn’t entirely true.

Kal addressed the crowd again.

“One day I noticed that we hadn’t had anyone from Ravens Peak come to Orin for while. I’d been busy and hadn’t attended to my Heart, to my G’ani. I hadn’t seen her for a few months. I missed her and hoped for a message. I trusted her so completely that I thought she would understand my absence. She knew what I was working on, and how important it was, or so I believed. I thought that G’ani must have taken her warriors away on a raid, or was collecting tribute from some of the outlying villages.” He turned to G’ani and said coldly,

“You did become quite enthusiastic about gathering Tribute didn’t you? When it was destined for your own coffers you seemed to accept it readily enough!”

G’ani, unable to find words immediately, pulled at her silver grey hair in desperation. She was distracted for a second as she realised she held a silver grey sheaf of that once splendid red crown in her hand. She brushed the unruly mane behind her with her hands. He’d lost none of his ability to convince her that he must be right and she, therefore, wrong and ungracious in the face of his generosity. He’d always been able to do that. Her hair was weak. She was weak. She was old, too old not to speak true, and so she did.

“I was “your Heart”? “Your G’ani” was I? Yet in all that time you never told me of the wife and two children waiting for you in Orin? You admit this and still you say you loved me? You humiliated me, your wife too.”

“Three.” Kal corrected her without emotion. ” Jenni and I had three children.”

“Oh, what does it matter?” G’ani screamed at him. “You made me believe in you! You made me think that I was doing the right thing for Ravens Peak, but all the time I was just betraying my people into despair!”

Then she threw herself at him in fury, her wooden staff waving ridiculously only to find herself sobbing, her staff lying at her feet, and she held fast in the arms of the old man who still had the strength to contain her temper. He always had.

“It was nearly forty years ago, G’ani” he soothed, unshed tears causing his voice to sound strained and desperate.

“It was yesterday for me, Kal D’Onet” she negated his comfort and his caring with her eyes, red from too many tears, “Yesterday”, she said to his sad, sorry gaze, her eyes for just a second pleading for him to recognise what leaving him had cost her. Then she turned away from him.

“I hate you” she maintained stoically, but untruthfully. and therefore unconvincingly.

Putting his arm around her shoulder, Kal D’Onet carefully steered the trembling G’ani back to the stone chair again, guiding the shaking old woman back safely into her seat.

“I found that G’ani hadn’t sent her warriors on an overnight raid” he told them all. “Instead she’d over a period of time organised for the entire population of her village to flee Ravens Peak. Every man, woman and child had been smuggled out in small parties. An exodus that I suppose I should give her credit for, it was so rapidly and effectively done.

I rode over there, concerned, well in truth I was worried sick, when no merchants or messages had been received in over a week. I found the place deserted.

Well it was exactly what the enemy had been waiting for. They’d had spies in our territory for months, but I hadn’t told her that. There’d been no opportunity. I saw their banners heading for Ravens Peak on my way back to Orin. I had to ride at full speed to keep out of range of their archers. It was too late and there was nothing I could do but prepare Orin for siege.

They moved quickly into a ready made stronghold, built at my command. The irony of it! They had food and resources waiting for them, piled up for the taking and all because I couldn’t bring myself to kill a headstrong barbarian woman, and then allowed her to rise beyond her capability,” And now it was his turn to shout,

“You almost cost me Orin, G’ani!” He paced up and down as he remembered it. It had been the first time he’d ever felt vulnerable in his life. He laboured the point. She had to understand, no matter how much it hurt her. “They were almost at the gates of Ravens Peak when I discovered what you’d done. An enemy army that we could have easily held off together took up residence in your abandoned village, fed itself on the supplies you couldn’t take with you and hadn’t destroyed, rested in your beds and laid siege to Orin two days later!”

“I didn’t know!” she gasped, horrified. Her distress was evident and with all his heart he wanted to give her some easement, but still he continued, determined to make her understand, even if it poured pain onto pain for both of them. There was no way to turn back now.

“My family died during that siege. The enemy poisoned a water supply just outside the Eastern wall. It was the one that fed the domestic wells. I should have anticipated it. It would have been what I would have been tempted to do in their place. Sick families take warriors minds off the job, make them unable to fully commit themselves. I suppose I just underestimated how ruthless they were. Most of the women, old people and children were seriously ill, about a third of those affected died. My family, they were amongst the first to die.”

G’ani could only wring her hands, still raw and bleeding from his grip on them earlier. She hadn’t known any of this history. His children…his wife…she’d never wished them or any one any harm.

“Kal” she wailed “I didn’t….”

“Of course you didn’t know!” he snapped in frustration. “Did I say that I thought you meant to do it? I know you didn’t mean to do it, you didn’t know that they were coming! But…you didn’t trust me in the end. When whatever Gossip finally told you about Jenni and our children, you didn’t talk to me about it. You abandoned me in your heart, and then you…abandoned me completely.”

He was trying to stay calm but he was feeling anger that had brewed and bubbled for so many years that its potency was undeniable. His voice boomed and reverberated around the clearing,

“What did it matter to us, you and I, that I had a wife and family? I loved you, I loved them, I loved all of you. God’s hear me!” he exclaimed “I loved all of you, you were part of it all G’ani, part of my dearest dream to make safe our towns and villages for all of our people.. I can’t help being what I was, or that my only talents in this life are for winning, and getting what I want!”

He was exhausted and just stood there, wrong and wronged and wishing it could have been different. After a while she spoke.

“ Winning? Getting what you wanted? What do you think you won in the end Kal? How can what you wanted be worth anything now?” G’ani asked softly “Fortune protect us! Whatever do you think you won, you silly old man?”

He sat down next to her, spent and empty of anger.

“I was true to myself” he replied, offering her his outstretched withered hands.

“As was I” she returned, taking them gently in her own.

There they sat for a little time. Two old, tired warriors trying to stay one step ahead of the scythe. Nothing left to show for all the struggles faced except pain and memories.

G’ani had almost finished her tale. She surveyed the still attentive group, but now she spoke to Kal D’Onet, with them giving loyal and attentive witness.

“Once the people of Ravens Peak had settled again, far from our old home, I couldn’t rest. The guilt of what I’d done to them, the pain of being apart from you…well…I just wandered. I kept my self alive by trading all over the land for thirty years or so, rarely returning to the community I felt that I’d betrayed. They never blamed me. Not once. Whenever I visited a new town I always hoped that you’d be there, sometimes I felt an unreal, almost euphoric certainty that you really would be there, that we could begin again differently, but it was always just one of those illusions that lonliness tortures us with.”

“I know” he answered, managing to find a smile for her, “I did the same thing. Once Orin was secure again I left there. I had no reason to stay. I always knew that you were somewhere. Always, and I never stopped searching for you.”

The fire was dying and the torches beginning to flicker, at the end of their lives. As if taking it as a signal the forest people began to stand up, all approaching them in turn, even the children. Each one bowed their heads and said a solemn and genuine thank you to both of them. The last to approach were the elderly couple, the leaders here.

“Stay with us if you wish, both of you” said the old woman compassionately, stroking Gani’s hair and then passing her frail fingers gently over the still angry battle scar that marked Kal D’Onet’s cheek and jaw. “Rest a while.” “After all” added her consort “where else is there for you to go? What else is there for you to do? Stay, and know peace. It would give us pleasure to see you smile. Become one of us.”

G’ani and Kal D’Onet looked at each other. For a moment it was as if the years had never intervened and he could swear that he saw her hair once again vibrant and ruddy, and she that his strong features had never been violated by a weapon. Just for a moment, but one moment was enough. They were who they were. It wasn’t in the nature of either of them to stand still whilst life marched on past them. They could breathe, and whilst they could breathe they were G’ani and Kal D’Onet, singly they were formidable, together… even now…they were possibly unassailable.

“Thank you” said G’ani to the old couple, “we’re grateful for the chance to recover from travelling, but tomorrow I’ll be leaving.” She dared not speak for him, but oh, how desperately she hoped that he would go with her. Kal D’Onet also thanked them, “and I’m not letting her out of my sight again” he told them with a grin.

“But wherever will you go?” repeated the old man. G’ani regarded Kal’s knowing expression. “To Aresh” she said at last “to Aresh, the place of my birth, my first home. To the home of the people who murdered my family, and Kal’s family. I want to tell them the truth. To make them hear it. They still raid. I want to try to make them stop. She turned to Kal D’Onet’s smiling, disfigured face,

“They were Areshi, the enemy, weren’t they?” “Yes” sighed Kal. “I feared to tell you back then. I thought that if you knew you were to fight your own tribe, well, I thought I might lose you.”

“You’re “my tribe” now” she said with surety, following the lead of the Elder and caressing the scar on his face lightly with her hand. “Look at you. You even look like a barbarian.” “Aresh it is then” agreed Kal “though I doubt they’ll listen, it’s the only job left for us to try and do.”

Taking leave of the elders they followed one of the villagers to a hut used to store blankets and to accommodate overnight guests. A fire had been lit for some time and it was warm and inviting of sleep. A bed had been made for them already. One bed, but large enough for both. They helped each other into it and felt the luxury of feather and down soothe the aching that the long miles had caused. Finally they were together again. Still true to themselves and now each also true to the other. And that was where they were discovered the next morning, arms wrapped around each other, all burdens lifted from them at last, and their final plan left undone. The villagers buried their worn out bodies together in the forest, where they became the stuff of folklore and legend. Some remarked that never had two people looked so much at peace in death as G’ani and Kal D’Onet.

It was said that when the Reaper came for them they laughed and joked with him, and walked arm in arm with him, happy and excited to face this next unforeseen adventure.
There were some who swore that they saw them leave, three ghostly figures walking sunwards at dawn.

And it was also said that it had been Lady Fortune herself who had guided them both to the end of their story, and to the end of their time.

Well…who am I to deny it? It was me that did that after all. That’s my job.

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© Gill Whitehurst October 2007
http://www.morgenblumemusic.net
Rising Brook, Stafford, England

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