Legends by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: NewCon Press
Published: 2013-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

The Land of the Eagle

Juliet McKenna

“... and the brass eagle stood proud on the highest pinnacle of the castle gate, overlooking the town grown up around the margrave’s walls. Flying high on our flags, it was the token of our luck and so the eagle itself was carried into battle against the River Kingdom’s army...”

Nedirin ducked his head to hide a yawn. He’d had a tiring day, herding obstinate goats in these gullies and thickets between the river and the uplands. Now that the herds were penned for the night with the dogs on watch, he wanted to wrap himself in his blankets and yield to his weariness. He’d heard old Thulle’s stories so often that he could recite them in his sleep.

They all could, from the dog boys younger than Nedi to the grey-bearded herd masters as old as his grandsire. Their town had yielded to the men of the River Kingdom when Thulle was still a babe in arms.

If someone other than Thulle was telling the tale, the brass eagle had been cast into a charnel pit with the battlefield dead, or fallen into the river, or been stolen by the Paramount King’s men to be thrown in their furnaces far away to the south, in their capital city where the ruddy brown Tane flowing from the upland plains met the pale silty waters of the mighty Dore. That distant river cut through grasslands bounded only by the horizon to east and west and by mighty forests to the south. So folk said but no one from Hatalys had ever travelled so far to seek their fortune and returned to confirm such stories of woodlands without end.

Still, listening to old Thulle was the price which Nedi must pay for a seat by the fire pit, and the weather was growing colder as the hazel and ash trees turned to autumn gold. So he hid his boredom and edged closer to the embers.

“If the eagle ever returns,” Thulle continued, “Hatalys will be free.”

That was the one thing which all the tales agreed on, though ever since he was small Nedi had wondered how that could happen if the bird had been melted down and turned into door knobs or buttons for fancy waistcoats.

“Give it up, for pity’s sake,” growled Uderil from the far side of the stone-lined pit.

Some of the men who had already forsaken the fireside for their bedrolls murmured agreement. Nedi’s mother’s youngest brother and his father’s next elder were among them. They had promised to watch over him as he tended his family’s goats while his father’s broken ankle mended. They couldn’t afford to abandon this last trip into the hills to fatten the billygoats born in the spring and now destined for salting and smoking after autumn’s slaughters.

Uderil was still speaking. “I’ll take the River Kingdom’s grain and fine horses and black powder weapons to keep moor dogs from killing my goats over foraging for nuts and fruit and hunting hill elk with bow and arrow.

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