Crusade - James Lowder [143]
Vangerdahast studied the king's face for an instant. The monarch the wizard saw standing defiantly before him looked the same as the one who had started the crusade. And though the gray-shot brown beard and wrinkled brow were familiar, a long-absent spark shone in Azoun's dark eyes. With a start, Vangerdahast realized that he hadn't seen that fire in many years, not since the king was a young, idealistic cavalier.
*****
Sunlight slanted in through the single window of the ruined farmhouse and poured through the gaping holes in its thatched roof. The light revealed the dust and ash that danced about the room, but Thom Reaverson didn't notice it. The bard sat bathed in sunlight, bent over a makeshift desk. He squinted at the parchment and continued to write.
Some of the troops were unhappy with the king's decision to let the prisoners live, but apart from grumbling around the campfires, there was little negative reaction. A majority of the army simply took Azoun's word that keeping the defeated Tuigan alive was the course for good men. Luckily the prisoners themselves proved to be no trouble, and Azoun freed most of them in the first tenday after the battle.
Tapping the end of his pen lightly on his chin, the bard considered what else he should record. After a moment, Thom inked his stylus and set to work again.
The dwarves of Earthfast buried Torg, ironlord of their people, in a cairn of stone on the day of the Second Battle of the Golden Way. The dwarven lord's resting place stands only a few yards from the trees that served the Alliance so well. The pyres where the clerics burned the corpses from the battle will likely leave no permanent mark on the countryside, but they, too, were built near the site of the conflict.
The dwarves left a day later. Princess Alusair attempted to convince them to stay, at least until the king was certain the Tuigan were not going to mass another attack. "The battle is over," they told her. "There is nothing else for us to do here." Many in the Alliance were not sorry to see the dwarves go.
Throughout the campaign, they remained aloof and isolated.
"I don't see how the princess fought beside those cold little men for the three months before the crusade," Thom added to himself. From everything Alusair had revealed, the bard saw Earthfast as a lonely, embattled place, devoid of hope. It was hard to believe that Azoun's daughter, who seemed full of life, had stayed there.
That was before I met her, Thom decided. That was before she and the king were reconciled.
He shook his head and tried to dismiss the idle thoughts that dragged him away from the chronicles. Today was the first time in the month since the Second Battle of the Golden Way, as the conflict was now known, that the bard had stolen a chance to write. And since he wanted to have the notes on the crusade finished before the army returned to Cormyr, Thom had to get back to work.
Stretching once to get comfortable, the bard started to write once more.
It was clear on the day following the battle that the Tuigan were actually retreating. Scouts returned to report that the barbarians were covering an astonishing distance each day-a figure I would relate here but for fear of being called a liar. The death of Yamun Khahan at the hands of King Azoun, the illustrious hero of the crusade"Getting a bit carried away there," Thom said softly. Azoun had given the bard strict instructions after the battle that he was not to be valorized over the common troopers in the chronicles. "You'll surely ask me to strike this out,"
Thom noted, "so I'll do it now and save you the trouble."
After marking through the last phrase with heavy, dark lines, the bard repeated the last fragment he'd penned." 'The death of Yamun Khahan at