Effigy

It had rained on that day, strange for February. We had set our camp on a crag overlooking a pine valley. We watched it flood that night, the four of us, while the troops tossed nervously in their sleep. They were right to be terrified. We had been on campaign for more than four months, sloshing through a foreign country-side. Four loved bastard children on a vengeful death march. Lost more here than at home, battle, sickness, injuries piled up. Too many to take back home, too many scattered along the way. No druids to present them with a proper burial, we dug the ditches, mumbled what we could remember, “Slan.” Farewell.

We stayed on our course, and pursued our target as we moved. Sometimes we traveled in the sun, in the woods, tracking. Sometimes we traveled bathed in darkness on the high road, observing. We rested when we could, never for more than a night.

After an encounter, we returned to camp; patched up; packed up; moved. My shoulder clicked, the muscles spasm and I still carried my pack. Kael’s leg was crudely wrapped; he tried to hide the small jagged splinter of a bone that jutted from his skin. His brow was covered with a dressing, over one eye, catching the blood, he still carried his pack. Gunnar walked around stiffly so that he didn’t disturb the light cast around his midsection and he still carried his pack. Brogan, who walked tall, with no visible wounds just a light yellowish tint to his skin, carried his pack. He had always been sick as a child, stomach cramps kept him from training with us when we were younger. His mother died shortly after he was weaned, our father found her, yellow skinned, sagging in her favorite chair. Brogan seemed unaffected, not knowing what had really happened; he was more frustrated that he was too tired to train with us, more annoyed that he hurt too much to pick up his sword. These signs soon faded, but I refused to tell him that he was beginning to act like his mother before she died.

We were crazy.

We tried not to listen to the gushing water running ferociously off of the crag. We sat on that ledge, cold and wet, our faces stony, unyielding to the weather and to our weakness, hiding them from each other, even to the end. We had one thing to remind us of our father, fastened to the handles of our weapons, my claymore, Kael's spear, Brogan's battle-axe, and Gunnar's mace, the tip of an arrow. When our father was killed, along with one of his wives and our baby sister, we pulled the four arrows from his body.

"I always imagined dying honorably…. in battle," Kael said suddenly, breaking the silence between us, speaking loudly over the tempest, turning a smooth pebble in his palm.

"But not this one," the three of us retorted passing smirks down the line.

He had bowed his head, "I don't know," he resolved with an optimistic smile looking out over the forest, the water dripping over his eased brow and falling from his chin.

"There is a girl back home," Gunnar began. "I want to find her, when this is all over and marry her." He said this with a shy smile, picking rock chips from near his legs and throwing them into the ravine beneath us.

Brogan smiled knowingly out into the storm before he turned to the young man next to him. "It's that druidess," he said to the young man, and reached to scratch futilely at his neck.

Gunnar let out a short but happy laugh.

Kael and I leaned back, sharing a look, a similar thought of the pixie-like enchantress and laughed our approval.

"What about you, sister?" Gunnar asked me earning himself a sharp jab in the ribs from Kael, causing him to stiffen and glare at him. "What? I want to know what Marek wants after this."

I smiled at my youngest brother before raising my head to the storming sky and embracing the jets of coldness, willing it to numb and harden my soft skin. "I don't know. Maybe build a nice home, with a good man." I looked forward and cracked my right shoulder with a sickening click. The vision of a sturdy circular home, built with rough, solid stone, a thatched roof that leaked when then the wind and rain beat against it.

"A family?" Brogan provided.

"I guess," shrugging, I fought not to wince at my shoulder snapping back. I wasn't sure; I never imagined what I would be doing after war. It was what my life was built to be, I was trained, instructed in our ways of battle; weaponry, infantry, tactics; settling down was not something that I intended to do; Kael's statement radiated truth within me, and dying like my ancestors on foreign soil, conquering our oppressors was fitting.

The battle that ensued that dark morning cost us more than we were willing to sacrifice. Brogan helped Kael limp away from the field as I dragged a screaming Gunnar with my good arm. His blood mixed in the mud as we crawled up the hill.

Gunnar died. He bled through two blankets. The blood that remained made a puddle on the ground and was now blending in a small stream that was running off of the crag. I stood near the edge, sword in hand. It felt heavy in my weak hand. Kael fell on his spear in the night while Gunnar's effigy grew, joining his brother. I wanted solace in my sword.

"What are you doing?" Brogan questions approaching. I remained silent. "Marek." He's covered in blood, Gunnar's blood. Kael's blood. Our brothers' blood. "What about your home? What about your husband?"

I look out over the ravine, at the receding water. "I don't want it," I screech. "I want them back."

"I don't want to build another tomb."

I steel my face and try to plug the wetness seeping from my eyes.

He reaches for my sword and I drop it, letting it clatter against the rock. Now he reaches for me and I wince. Brogan places a hand on my back and the other on the front of my shoulder, compressing until a larger pop echoes over the ravine and I howl.

At home, we stand before the effigy of our father, we had buried Kael and Gunnar with their weapons, and we returned, with their arrow tips, mine and Brogan's as well, tied to the ends of arrows. Brogan was too weak now to fire the bow, and I couldn't use it with only one arm. We worked all night, exhausted and faint, he held the bow, lining up the arrow and I pulled back, the fury from our campaign renewed in my blood. And we put the arrows back in.

Elizabeth Malley

1150 Words