Lingering Shadows-Chapter 34

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Chapter 34- Dark in the Desert

Aro was so sure of his first shot that he didn’t even have to watch his arrow to know he had hit the target. The second after he turned toward the chief guard and had another arrow on the string. His whole body tensed as he quickly pulled the arrow back and released it. A million thoughts screamed in his mind and the battle spell roared through his veins while his hand closed on the shaft of the third arrow. He had already turned toward the third guard when he heard the chief guard’s cry cut short. 

In one fierce, swift motion he pulled the string back and let his arrow fly. His aim was perfect. He stood panting and saw his arrow strike and the guard crumple to the ground. 

The frantic roar in his mind and the desperate pounding in his chest sank a little and he went weak with relief, dropping his bow to the sand. His hands started shaking again when he bent over to pick it up, and he crouched for a moment, his head down and just staring at the sand as what had just happened played over and over and over in his mind. Only when he took several deep breaths and stood up, tightly gripping his bow, did he realize that his forearm was stinging where his bowstring had snapped against it. 

Vaguely he heard the almost silent noises of the first wave of the attack slipping into the camp and the louder sounds of struggle from the small skirmishes that broke out everywhere, and were silenced almost as soon as they had been started. 

Then he realized that dark shadows were moving silently toward the mine from the sand dunes all around him. He made sure that his sheath was still strapped on tightly and moved from his sand dune down to join the other warriors in the second attack, cursing himself silently when his still shaky knees caused him to trip and then lose his footing in the soft, loose sand on the slope, even though the way he instinctively landed caused it to make almost no noise at all. He came close to panicking, thinking he had fallen on his bow, but he had held it away from him when he fell. 

He skidded down the dune for a couple feet, then smoothly pushed himself up and crept into the mine camp.

Someone brushed by him- when he turned and glanced up it was Jaid, who silently grinned at him and then crept off into the shadows. 

His heart started pounding again before he even realized it had started to calm down, and the battle spell was rushing through him and the chaos in his mind was so loud he could barely tell what he was doing as he dodged between the shadows of the few structures in the mine camp toward the mouth of the bloodrock mine. It was mostly shadowed, even though there were several guards around it, growing more anxious at every sound of fighting, gripping their weapons nervously. He slipped past them easily, barely making a sound. 

They had their backs turned to the mine, and when he got there, he looked carefully and saw that Idran was already there, probably waiting for him, bow at the ready. Idran was one of the older warriors, an archer himself, who had taken an interest in the young archer. 

Aro slung his bow carefully over his back and grabbed at the rough rock surface, grabbing a plank that supported the opening to the mine after testing his weight on it and pulled upward, glancing down into the black opening. He couldn’t tell how deep it was, and he also didn’t realize he was grabbing the rock much tighter. It wasn’t far from the ground to the top of the mine, but he had no idea how far it would be from the ground to the bottom of the mine. Probably very far.

He climbed the steep rock slope the mine was dug into without a sound, and somehow Idran still knew he was coming up and looked over the edge. 

Aro braced his feet against the rock and held on with one hand, groping for another handhold but couldn’t find one. Idran had expected that and leaned over to grab Aro’s arm and pull him over the edge, onto a small rock shelf right above the mouth of the mine. Aro winced almost imperceptibly when Idran’s hand wrapped around his forearm and he grasped back, very annoyed at himself that he had aimed perfectly, yet forgot his form and snapped himself with his string. He could tell when Idran grabbed his arm that it was definitely going to bruise. 

When he was up on the rock shelf, he set one foot firmly against the solid slope of rock and the other against one of the wooden beams around the mouth of the mine. Idran stood up next to him, grabbing his bow and nodding for Aro to do the same. You didn’t talk on what was supposed to be a stealth mission, but from the surprised light in Idran’s eyes, Aro could tell he wanted to. He wondered with a thrill whether Idran had seen him from his lookout post. It was possible, even likely. The mine was the highest point of the camp, the rock slope an abnormal sight in the desert, but covered with years of sand so that it just looked like another, larger dune. 

There were small fights breaking out all over the camp, but they almost all ended quickly. Aro spotted a guard approaching Ryith, who was already fighting three other guards, from behind. He turned urgently to point it out to Idran, but Idran’s arrow had already flown. 

For what seemed like hours but was actually only minutes, Aro stood above the mine, watching Idran and pointing out where a skirmish was likely to go badly, if Idran hadn’t already seen it. This would be his place in a raid, if he ever was accepted into the warrior’s circle. 

Ryith saw it all, he thought. But there wasn’t time to think about what Ryith was going to say or do after this raid. Idran pointed out a small fight where there were five guards to one wanderer, and Aro drew his bow as well.

Then something reminded him very well that a raid was not a time to be distracted. Idran hissed a warning, but Aro felt something tug on his cape and heard a rip, then felt a sting of pain. He glanced down in surprise and increasing annoyance to see that he had lifted his bow just in time, because when he shifted position the enemy arrow had torn through his cape, barely scraping his side in the process. His head flew up and he saw one of the Doonish guards, an archer too apparently, crouched on top of a rickety shed that held mining tools. He aimed his bow, but Idran had already taken down the other archer.

The whole raid was over in half an hour, and Ryith and the highest ranked warriors were gathering around the mine they now owned, trying to estimate how much bloodrock it still held as Idran and Aro climbed down from above the mouth of the mine. Ryith nodded to both of them, but other than that ignored them completely. 

He wouldn’t recognize the warriors’ parts in the victory until later that night. And on the following day they would take all the bloodrock they wanted.They wouldn’t have the mine for long though, as Yorsha Doon would probably want one of its largest mines back, and though Ryith did manage to keep several small ones in his possession, his tribe was too small to defend this mine from whatever reinforcements Yorsha Doon would send. But the plunder from just a few days would be enormous. 

Aro had a hard time focusing while he helped three of the boys his age build up a fire on the sand in front of the mine, because he constantly felt Ryith’s eyes on him. It was extremely unnerving, to say the least, but Aro was looking forward with excitement to what Ryith would say around the fire. The raid had been a success, and no matter which way he turned it, he couldn’t think of any way he had done something Ryith would consider wrong. 

His excitement grew with the fire as it flared up, illuminating the camp in a fierce yellow brightness. 

Other warriors had gone through the small storehouse, coming out with a relatively acceptable amount of food, and also finding one barrel of bibes, much to the approval of the other warriors, since a celebration barely seemed complete without it. 

*

The fire roared high, the smell of meat from the storehouse lingered around the circle, and Aro crouched a few feet away, staring into the constantly moving tongues of flame in a rare moment of contentment and security. The ache in his forearm had diminished to an occasional throbbing, and he was grateful his sleeve covered the dark bruise.

Considering he had made it through his first official raid alive, and that he had taken down three guards in a move that had probably saved the raid, he thought he should have felt much more excited. Instead all he felt was a dream-like expectancy, occasionally peaked with a sudden shiver of elation, along with the fact that now, thinking back on it, he couldn’t believe he had actually done what he had done. Other than that, he only shared the rough satisfaction of the warriors around him. 

Licking grease off his fingers, a bibe set into the sand next to him, warm from the flames and waiting to hear what Ryith would say, he couldn’t remember a time anything had gone so perfectly well for him, with surprisingly few close shaves.

Jaid seemed to think so too, satisfied that Aro had made it through his first raid with little more than a scrape to his side and a little blood on his shirt.

Ryith shifted at the head of the circle, running his finger over the blade of one of his knives. He looked around the circle meaningfully, and the harsh laughing and shouts around the circle quieted slowly.

First, he congratulated his men for their victory, counting this as one of the achievements of their tribe. A large mine was captured, and every warrior there afterward to see the spoils. He raised his bibe and the warriors around the fire responded with such a loud, confident cheer as they raised their bibes that the shout rang across the desert. Aro grinned, elation rising in him when he shouted and tipped back his mug. 

Ryith recounted the smaller victories of the night, congratulating the hero who had done the deed, frequently asking a warrior to bring his scabbard or sheath of arrows to the head of the fire so he could carve small notches across the side.

Aro mostly ignored the proceedings, rubbing his left palm up and down over the smooth side of his sheath. He did look up though when Jaid stepped forward, and when the warriors shouted their approval, his shout was the loudest among them. 

He started to get nervous because name after name went by and his wasn’t among them, but when Ryith looked at him there was an assuring gleam in his eyes and he actually smiled a little. Or maybe it was just Aro’s imagination. 

But it certainly wasn’t his imagination when Ryith started telling about one of the young warriors in training who had shot three guards who would have sounded the alarm, which would have caused the warriors to lose the element of surprise and possibly would have endangered the raid. The five of the six boys clustered together near the fire glanced at each other, unable to hide their surprise, and then their gaze was turned to the only two who had carried a bow with them. Aro, and one other boy. The other archer looked at Aro with so much surprise that Aro almost burst out laughing. 

He could feel the eyes of every warrior around the fire glance his way, then quickly skim over the other boy, who by his shocked expression clearly hadn’t been the one Ryith was talking about. 

His heart pounded and he could not believe what he was hearing. He knew from memories hazed by the battle spell that he was the one who had done the things Ryith was saying, but Ryith was making it sound like he was one of the warriors he had called heroes that night. And all the approval in his voice was because of him. 

So when Ryith told him to bring his sheath of arrows, he couldn’t hide his grin.

Ryith cut three notches on the side of his sheath and handed it back to him with a smile. 

“Excellently done, young warrior,” Ryith said, clapping a hand on Aro’s shoulder, and Aro thought he was going to burst with suppressed pride and excitement. 

He walked back to his place around the fire, smiling back at Jaid who was grinning at him, a look of surprise still on the older boy’s face.

The warriors raised their bibes and cheered, and under cover of the loud shout Aro let out a short laugh through which escaped everything inside him, incredulity and excitement and pride. 

For once he felt like he belonged.