Will Sheerin

Scáth Leeth Rhynn
Scáth Leeth, Artycen, Stornia
Rhynn Hawkin crouched by a lone birch tree overlooking the ruins of an ancient fortress. His fingers tapped along the shaft of a spear and an unusual blend of excitement and trepidation began to stir within him. Fifty-two enormous standing stones encircled the fortress, their shadows stretched with the sun’s gradual descent. Scáth Leeth, which was Old Stornian for the Grey Shadows, was a fortress that had long collapsed into ruin. Rhynn glanced down and noticed Leifa’s knee was bouncing. She was hunkered next to him, her trembling fist clenched around the pommel of a sheathed knife. Her focus fixed on the diminishing umbra of Scáth Leeth as the world slipped into a smothering shade. It was only then that Rhynn noticed his own knee shaking beneath him. He blew into his hands for warmth and mist burst from them.
“Now?” Leifa asked, for the third time in less than an hour.
“No,” Rhynn replied, his voice muffled by the cowl over his mouth, “Not yet.”
“Calm yourself. Your shivering is making me nervous,” Tide said.
Rhynn’s breath got caught in his throat and his hand twitched with instinct. He had forgotten Tide was behind him. His closest friend leaned against the trunk of the silver tree, his arms wrapped around the sheath of his longsword.
“It’s cold… I’m cold, that’s all,” Leifa said.
Rhynn sighed, breath smoking in the chilled air. He was relieved that Tide hadn’t noticed his own shivering.
“We won’t have much longer to wait,” Rhynn said.
Leifa rubbed her free hand up and down her thigh. Rhynn caught himself watching, then snapped his attention back to the horizon.
“Soon,” Rhynn promised, “Caster said we move once the sun is set. They won’t see us coming if it’s dark.”
“They mightn’t see us, but they will definitely hear Leifa’s teeth rattling off each other,” Tide mocked.
“If things go bad it won’t be because they heard my teeth. More likely they got a whiff of you.”
“That’s enough,” Rhynn said, “Focus.”
Tide shrugged as if Rhynn’s worries were ill-placed.
“Even if they do see us, they’re just raiders, we can handle raiders.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Rhynn said pulling his cowl away from his mouth, frustrated.
“It only takes one mistake to end your life.”
He glanced sideways at Tide, teeth grinding behind pursed lips. A sleepless night of walking rugged terrain and the bitter chill in his bones had Rhynn’s patience on a knife’s edge.
“Anything can happen once swords are drawn,” Leifa admitted, perhaps to sever the tension.
Tide toyed with a dying bronze leaf as it clung to the end of a lone branch, but said nothing else.
It was a known truth that Death haunted a Nine. That’s what Prince Caster always said. Rhynn only hoped that there would be no more mistakes. What happened to Clara could not be repeated. He considered raising that point but thought better of it. Nobody needed that memory haunting them tonight.
Tide plucked the bronze leaf from its branch and Rhynn watched it float away on the breeze.
“Victory does not mean we will live,” Tide said, sorrowfully.
The leaf tumbled on the wind. Perhaps the memory of that night still haunted Tide as much it did Rhynn.
“It means we never gave up,” Rhynn said, finishing the words Prince Caster said over Clara’s cairn. A moment of silence passed.
“Now?” Leifa asked.
It wasn’t time and Rhynn knew that, but he couldn’t disappoint Leifa anymore, and he needed to distract his mind from Clara’s memory.
On the horizon, the sun’s last rays of light danced across rippled golden waters. Rhynn gathered his spear and banished the tremble from his fist by clenching the shaft tight.
“Now.”