Chapter IX
The sun glared. Domen’s thoughts burned with wickedness.
Denied his mountain, he crouched hidden in the dim light of a copse deep in the woods in the northwest parts of the island. His ideas slowly fermented as he sought to make gain of Bregdan’s death.
“Ecealdor learns bitterly the price of relying upon these weak people! Weak! How I would take their weakness and rub his nose in its stench! But these feeble minds will soon forget what they witnessed today. They require constant watching. I must drive Bregdan’s ruin into their brains. So Ecealdor sent him here as a witness — he will witness indeed.”
He slunk into the wild fringes of the mountains, where he knew Begietan lurked about in solitude. Like the twisting of Four Rivers, their paths crossed as Begietan stalked one of the wild hogs that rooted about in the forests.
“I make a demand of you. Go into the community,” Domen said in a low growl.
“Hush!” scolded Begietan, without lowering his loaded bow nor taking his hedonist gaze from the pig at the end of his aim. “I am hunting.”
Domen grabbed the point of Begietan’s arrow and snapped the shaft in two like a stick of chalk. The pig started at the loud crack, glancing only briefly before darting into the underbrush. “The time of worshipping your appetites has run out. Now you live only to satisfy mine. Depart from here,” Domen ordered. “Raise up what men you have and deliver them to the square. We have business yet there.”
“I will do as I please,” said Begietan, but his voice betrayed wavering defiance.
“You do well to shut up, then, as you pleased in the square,” Domen glowered at him. “Do you think of mutiny? Do you suppose you can retreat from me now? No, you can go neither forward nor back. You’ve burned your bridges to the community, fool — you hoard the orchards’ goods as does your family! The people hate you from the pits of their empty stomachs. And the disciples you’ve made — they belong to me! Dare you so boldly as to turn against me? If you have hopes of seeing tomorrow, for today you will do as I say.”
“But I want to eat.”
“Perhaps, but at least you breathe as well. Gather your men in the square.”
Though Begietan, tall and broad, could easily have overpowered Domen, threats had whipped his heart. He allowed his fear to overrule hunger, and ran grumbling towards the community. Domen started out behind him, but slowly; as the men gathered to their task, he would consider well his strategy.
“He must stay. He must stay,” he muttered. “He must remain the sign.”
These scrolls before me curl into grim smiles. How could I have known Domen would take up my own cry? Somehow he may have planted the seed himself in my mind, compost to evil thought. The king’s scribes must know, for so they recorded Domen’s words upon these parchments – do they now accuse me, then? No, say not so, for only Domen does accuse, and greatly does the king’s mercy endure for those who seek and remain still. But still the words mock, the writing stabs deeply, and sorrow bleeds onto my own pages.
Domen wound along the trodden paths and through the streets of the community, toward the town square. He knew Bregdan’s body would lie there still, even hours after his death, for no man nor woman upon Feallengod would dare move it:
In ancient legends of the island, told since the days of Ecealdor’s visitation, when he stopped upon the island’s shores, even the days when he had only just established his people upon Feallengod, another man of Gægnian walked with him. This man, the seventh son of Feallengod, spoke judgment on behalf of the king. But he himself lived uprightly in the cool of his evening, never straying from the king’s counsels. Then the man walked no longer — into the sea he went, perhaps, or the grave, or back to Gægnian, nobody knew to say — and Ecealdor spoke of him no more, and never asked after him, and neither so anyone else. Since that time a mythology spread the land concerning the natives of Gægnian, fantastic stories about mystical properties of their flesh and bone told unruly children, not the least I. Some said denizens of Gægnian produced miracles by the mere force of their will; others claimed fire might sweep down from the sky to take them up. Long generations came and went without failing to believe these mysteries. Even I had not yet grown to ridicule such notions, but as long as no visitor from Gægnian ever appeared, what did it matter? Now after Bregdan’s death, I gave him no more respect than when he breathed, but not so most of the other islanders.
Still many paid tribute to superstition – any death inflicts a seductive atrocity, an insult to the creation. We are not made for it. At death a man leaves, and yet he lies there still. The living are left agape, like gazing upon a particularly bad painting of someone known intimately. A cadaver draws a morbid fascination to itself, as though it bears some unnatural beauty in its abrupt change — a horrific beauty. We humans desire matters come to an end to a point, but death brings more closure than comfort allows. For the Feallengod folk, Gægnian defied even this closing of the door. Life springs ever new there, according to those same legends – who knew what truth lay there. The citizens of that most mystical land are said to sleep only, deeply and darkly, then awaken at their pleasure. Bregdan hailed from that veiled nation, sent from Gægnian, and the wetly credulous men of Feallengod would tremble to approach his body.
Like a vulture Domen rehearsed his strategy, circling his mind: With brash confidence he entered the square, prepared for any event as he would sink his claws into Bregdan’s corpse, so he thought, but his eyes double-crossed that notion. There against the building, cradling his fallen friend, knelt Mægen-El, grieving over his body in soothing eulogy.
“Thou spoke truly,” Mægen-El crooned, his voice silken. “And make thy end well upon Feallengod.” Having secured Liesan upon his ship, Mægen-El had re-embarked onto the island to check on Bregdan. Expecting to transport him back to Gægnian, he instead found him prostrate to the dust of the grave.
“Shallow sentiment clogs the heart of Gægnian these days,” said Domen at the sight of him, surprised and churlish, shouldering his way through the sizeable assembly that had come to gawk. In his head he cursed the presence of Ecealdor’s aide but stilled his tongue, rantings of no service to him now. “I claim the body of Bregdan! Let the living bury their dead, I say.”
“Begone, Domen, thou hast no business here.”
“Oh, quite the opposite, Mægen-El, I have much work here. You withstood me against Liesan, but you cannot deny me Bregdan. A funeral remains to plan, a grand memorial, a monument to design. I think this place would suit him best for a burial plot, don’t you? The ground where he fell, the very soil of his death, the center of the city. I want that body.”
“Nay, nay, thou wilt not take it. Not while I have yet an ounce of marrow in my bones, or breath in my lungs.” Mægen-El grimaced and gritted his molars at the thought: Some ghoulish device for the body of Bregdan steeped in Domen’s odious brain.
“You may find you need your last breath. Do you not hear? My men approach — their steps even now sound from the horizon. Strong men of Feallengod, and many. They follow my orders, not yours, not the king’s. We will take that body for our own purposes.”
“Then thou wilt have two corpses for thy choosing, if think thou thy company hast the wherewithal for the undertaking.”
A group of some two dozen young men tramped around a corner, led by Begietan. Many bore arms, though not much more than clubs and pitchforks, but many also carried no weapon. These were not mere rabble, happy simply to contradict edicts from Ecealdor, but rather volunteers to Domen’s desires, sharing his same putrid ambitions. All stopped short upon seeing Mægen-El, holding Bregdan’s limp form, in argument with Domen. Older, wiser, wasted, I sat in still waters of the gutter, staring with Gastgedal and a fresh bottle.
“I claim the body of Bregdan. I am prince of Feallengod — so has he said. I claim my right to the body of this man.”
“Why would thou abuse the body of the king’s watchman? What can he mean to thee?”
?
??He means victory to me, my great victory, that’s what,” Domen hissed, and his scowl turned hard. “That body proves Ecealdor grows weary and feeble. Bregdan came to turn the island away from me, only to drop dead. What better face for futility? What is more weak and worthless than a dead man? He cleaves to Ecealdor’s defeat like a brother. The people of Feallengod rejected Bregdan, and death made his only escape – so also for Ecealdor. I will make a great monument to this failure, a memorial to stand forever. That body will remind the people that I rule over them. One way or another, I rule over them.”
“Then thou wilt not have him.”
“You forget you stand alone. Many gather here who would disagree with you. They obey my orders only.” Slowly he turned to his men. “Go take that body!” he croaked.
The men edged forward. They numbered certainly enough to overwhelm Mægen-El, but their hearts first faltered at the legends of Ecealdor’s courts. Floods of stories, the tales of Gægnian learned as children, filled their heads. The sheen of Mægen-El’s armor and his robust build offered no soothing for their anxiety. Still too his sword, now sharply out of its scabbard, made its own point: The men awaited inspiration as to how to go about their work, but received none. I had to laugh, to myself to attract no attention, not just at their milling reticence but for the sake of scorn itself. I cared no more for them than the carcass they fought over. But their challenge I envied not: The imposing building where Bregdan had died protected Mægen-El’s back, and large stone benches stood to either side for cover. Domen’s men would have to make a frontal assault or none at all.
Mægen-El drew to his full height and tested his right arm with a brace of broad swipes of his blade. “Yea, come. What is this body worth to thee? An arm? A life? Come, let us barter together.”
The men drew back from the sword, not just its shining peril but also Mægen-El’s looming menace, and his teeth clinched at his words. As the king’s messenger, he spent not his days in battle, but he willed now to lock eyes with death defending whatever was left of Bregdan. Ecealdor had not sent the shepherd to Feallengod in vain, Mægen-El resolved; he now must protect that mission. Domen’s men, ill prepared and not sure what they were asked to fight for, keenly beheld the look of Mægen-El’s face. Nervous voices, too quiet to understand except in their trickling fear, tested the air as did feet upon the cobblestones.
Begietan pulled a single arrow and quickly shot at Mægen-El. Sure of flight, it found its mark, but glinted lightly off his polished breastplate. He did not blink. As it skittered upon the pavement Mægen-El made forward, and some half the men, those in the back, turned and fled. With a flick of his wrist, Mægen-El pulled one of his daggers from a boot, letting fly to deftly pop Begietan’s bowstring, and then so too did Begietan run.
“Useless!” muttered Domen. “But time remains at my side. You can not scare away the hours, Mægen-El. You can not fend off exhaustion feigning bravado. We will see what comes of the clock.”
Dusk was turning to dark upon the day, and indeed the voyage to Feallengod, the saving of Liesan and the loss of his friend all served to exhaust Mægen-El. Roused in the wee hours, he had left the ship the moment it landed, before dawn. Yet he determined not to leave the body, neither in fact nor in sleep. So did the vigil begin. Twenty one hours it continued, as the moon climbed up one end of the sky and descended the other. Stars blinked with disinterest, much too distant to make out the events of that long night. Twenty one hours it persisted, as the cock crowed and the sun reappeared. Mægen-El’s mind wandering with the breeze of his thoughts, no more than waking dreams. Clouds too rolled slowly past, sometimes hiding the bright orb’s face, sometimes revealing its cheerful ambivalence. Twenty one hours, as the townsfolk emerged from their houses and walked past, glancing at Mægen-El and Domen with worried curiosity but avoiding any accidental involvement. Birds sang, dogs trotted by with only a glance, fallen leaves danced to the piping of the wind, and still Mægen-El obstinately knelt at his post. I slept, and awoke, but arose not. Twenty one hours passed, filled with Domen’s continued railing.
It came to be nearly the setting of the second day. A smattering of townsfolk had gathered, at a safe distance. Some of Domen’s men returned, and others drifted away, but Mægen-El held them at bay, unrelenting. Domen passed the hours in a squat, alternating between yammering at Mægen-El and falling silent. He seemed to nap with his eyes open, rolling into his head, taking on the appearance of the undead, repulsive even to his own men. Mægen-El’s head hung heavily, his eyelids wrestling with his will. Several moments he caught his attention slumping, and forced himself to brace again against attack. His armor weighed upon his shoulders, and all the effort he could muster went to gripping his sword. “No longer can I endure this,” he said under his breath. “I need Gelic-El.”
Domen looked like a famished dog at the hunt. “Perhaps Ecealdor should have thought …” he began.
As if a miracle, at that moment the rhythmic sound of clanging armor came from among the buildings. Even my wobbling head turned toward the clatter, and necks strained through open windows to see what would come. There, trudging through the narrow streets, appeared Gelic-El in brassy regalia and armed to the teeth. Those many weeks ago Bregdan and Mægen-El had set sail from Gægnian, but not before Ecealdor had sent Secanbearn to fetch Gelic-El. For this purpose the king made his designs.
Gelic-El grabbed Mægen-El by the shoulder and shook him playfully. “Hey, bobble head, wake up there. A fine companion you’ve turned out — I haven’t seen you once since landfall. Ship’s captain said I’d find you here. Your aides have Liesan safe and comfortable, back on the longboat. Need some help?”
“Take over here. Prevent Domen,” Mægen-El said grimly. “I will return to the ship and send men to claim Bregdan’s body.” As simply as that, he slipped out of the square.
“For a messenger, he is a man of few words,” commented Gelic-El to nobody in particular. He considered the body at his feet. “A good man has fallen here.”
Domen, still squatting, scowled and cast a handful of dirt to the air with a curse.
“So you again pester me. Long do you and I go back, Gelic-El. A time long past could have seen us strong allies. Now I have my own mission, and I will not again share. I will have the body of Bregdan. Do not try to stop me.”
“Never have I set foot upon Feallengod, nor do I come now for pleasant conversation. This vast gulf have I set behind me for this one purpose, to withstand your desire for Bregdan. Those very words of Ecealdor yet abide in my ears.” Gelic-El drew his long sword, propped before him like a mace, its tip sinking slightly into the ground, his open palm resting upon the grip.
As intimidating to see as was Mægen-El, Gelic-El struck a truly alarming figure. I shrank deeper into the shallow gutter, the pitiful extent of the best I could do. His breastplate appeared ready to pop its joints at the mass of his shoulders; the long, flowing garment beneath failed to cloak his physique. Bristling with armor and weaponry, with unkempt hair and grizzled beard, his seven-foot frame towered over the people of Feallengod. One by one, what remained of Domen’s men discreetly slipped away.
My first sight of Gelic-El put me in mind of lunacy. My bottle now empty keeping my company offered no further reassurance; I had yet to prepare for the next. Gelic-El loomed monstrous over the people, tall and broad. I gladly remained back from the crowd, and certainly away from Domen, though a pang of sympathy for him sunk its talons into me, for facing this foe. My heart accuses me! But fear did nothing to change the hateful temper lodged in my craw. This giant man from the king could force his way upon us, if that pleased the royal prerogative. My will to resist Ecealdor only hardened. I wallowed in my squalor, angry that the king had remained distant for so long, angry that he now visited his dominion upon Feallengod.
“This promises to show itself good,” Gastgedal said like he sat before a banquet. “Some use for soberness still, ’ey, my lovely – for clear eyes as two dogs fight.”
“I wil
l keep this body on the island,” Domen declared. “It belongs to the people of Feallengod! It belongs with them, to decay in their midst. They loved Bregdan here. Shouldn’t they get the chance to show him suitable respect? Should he remain here, they will visit his grave and honor his memory every day. They will come to adore him above all others. His name inscribed on a great, granite marker, it will be read and remembered by every generation. The people will pass their fingers over the tombstone, feel the very presence of Bregdan, to recall him in a sacred way. You know how Mægen-El loved him. Don’t you agree he must receive this honor? Over time, he will take hold the people’s hearts as much as Ecealdor himself, perhaps more.”
Gelic-El stood over the body of Bregdan. “May Ecealdor’s justice fall upon you,” he said.
“You have no grasp how important Bregdan is to my islanders. He is the mediator with Ecealdor – too bad he is dead. His ways could have led the people back to the king. Now the importance lies in his body. While his monument stands upon the land, his words will never fade from men’s minds. What is it he said? ‘That conciliation has come, and Ecealdor’s long suffering endures without end.’ Surely you will not deny this poor people their last connection to the king?”
“May Ecealdor’s justice fall upon you.”
Domen grimaced at the saying and thought back to the Gelic-El of Gægnian, gentle of spirit but not given to sentiment, and changed his approach. He fell upon an argument dear to a man disciplined and under authority, a demand for justice striking directly at Gelic-El’s sense of duty.
“Bregdan belongs to me. By his own testimony, he has murder upon his head. Men commit no greater crime than murder in all of the greater kingdom. Even in the service of Ecealdor he struck down the man of Tweard. He remains a criminal in the letter of the law. His shame maligns the king himself! Give him to me! He does not warrant grace from the king now, nor even pity. This body does not deserve entry into Gægnian. His crime, his crime far surpasses my own — he spilled the blood of another man! The king can’t turn a blind eye! The king cannot forgive! I am banished from Gægnian; so then should Bregdan be. Ecealdor would deny his own decree to allow Bregdan back into Gægnian. No, let Bregdan’s body stay here with such a great culprit as I.”
“May Ecealdor’s justice fall upon you,” Gelic-El said.
“Can you say no more?!” Domen exploded.
Gelic-El stood silent.
Domen wrought an excess of words to rebut Gelic-El’s simple assertion. A nervous urgency overtook him, knowing Mægen-El’s aides approached, knowing the clock now ticked against him. Mind sputtering, Domen’s tongue flowed with unbridled abandon. “Ecealdor sent Bregdan to Feallengod. He sent him to this putrid, barren island. He sent him into my domain. I am prince here — so has he said. So Bregdan belongs to me. He is here, he is here, he is on Feallengod soil, and so he must stay. He comes under my authority. Does Ecealdor regather any other man from Feallengod? No. They all find graves here. Here, here, he is here. Here he must stay. Born on Feallengod, lived on Feallengod, buried on Feallengod. They all belong to me. Dirt to dirt. Bregdan is here, you must leave him here. You see the natural order of things so run, the order Ecealdor has established, dear King Ecealdor, we must not upset the order. Not even Ecealdor should overrule royal mandate. He cannot do so. The good citizens of Feallengod won’t allow it.”
With this Domen appealed, one arm outstretched to the partisans behind him. Upon looking, though, he found the people, excepting only a handful, had scattered to their homes, and the gesture proved empty as my flask. My eyes gazed empty as well from the distant sewer; I pitied him.
“May Ecealdor’s justice fall upon you,” remained all Gelic-El would say.
At last, as the clock tower chimed the hour, Mægen-El’s aides arrived with a cushioned litter. Domen swore and threw rocks as they placed Bregdan’s body upon the bed. He kicked at the dust, both hands pulling at his hair, as they washed the face, arms and feet. Domen squatted and beat the ground with his grimy fists, wailing deep in his throat, as the men draped royal robes over Bregdan’s remains. The anger churned in Domen’s stomach, driving him to his knees in agony. Afraid to approach too closely, unable to force himself away, he twitched and reached out with his crooked fingers as if to take hold the body.
His arm held low, Gelic-El extended his sword toward Domen, its point menacing his nose. “May Ecealdor’s justice fall upon you,” he said.
Gelic-El led a hushed procession through the community; Domen clawed in fury at the harsh stone pavement. His anguished howling drew the townsfolk to peer out their windows, and a few even came to doorways to see off the old man. Bregdan had lived among them all of one day. He had spoken the old words of King Ecealdor, putting the people in mind of a more perfect time. But what can one man do in so brief a span? Is a single life of any consequence? Who can say what a man leaves behind him?
I cared not for such things. I only sucked upon the fumes of my spirits. I wagged my head in arrogant judgment that the king cared so much for his servants, but only after they were dead. I scoffed that words might make things right. Words, empty words, they spun about and disappeared into the air, meaning nothing. Bregdan’s words, Domen’s words, what difference lay between them? Soon everything they both had said would fade into forgetfulness, and the island would go on as ever. So destitute I, for a moment I wished Bregdan lived again, so I could spit in his eye. Take that message to the king, shepherd! No tidings from Ecealdor could make any difference now. New pronouncements meant no more than the ancient words carved generations ago upon the stone. Oh, that horrid stone! The thought pounded my brain. How that stone hung over my head and tormented me!
At the gate, the procession passed Beorn like a wake, but he did not see, holding his head in his hands. The hope he had put in Bregdan, the hope he had celebrated just some two days before, now forsook Feallengod upon the same litter as the old man’s body.
Down to the shore, to the docks on the eastern side, the ritual march proceeded silently. The royal longboat received Bregdan’s body and set sail for Gægnian with Gelic-El, Mægen-El and his aides aboard. As the stars and moon stood vigil, slowly and gently the vessel slipped across the island’s lee and out of sight over the western horizon.