Chapter Text
They hadn’t made it further than the edge of the Spine before the silence of the birds wrote their doom on every tree branch, on every stray cloud. What had begun as a favor between friends began to weigh down on Faolin’s shoulders. His mail suddenly constricted around his breath, and his ears stung to their tips. That was the sort of noise that Urgals made -- a low grumbling like wild animals packed too tightly in a cage. He could see their shadows in the distance.
The three of them -- himself, Arya, and Glenwing -- had carefully chosen this path knowing that Galbatorix’s own soldiers, at least the humans, wouldn’t pursue them into territory that even the craziest of cartographers refused to coherently map. The Spine was supposed to be the one range of mountains filled with every set of backwoods hamlet, every sort of human scum of the earth that Emperor Galbatorix had ever promised to fight for in ages past. This was their roundabout path to shake pursuit; their plan was perfected, charted, and re-charted to write in new contingencies. Faolin was one of the few elves who cared about such words. Immortality made it hard to consider one point in time as immediate, and certainly not immediate moments introspectively.
Not when the shuffling of branches and cracking of leaves beneath the feet of tens, maybe more, rustled from every direction. The birds were silent. Arya motioned for them to stop. Her helmet hid her eyes under its sleek, ebon surface, but Faolin knew where she was searching: down the path, where their route took a sharp incline down into a dusty gulley. A silhouette pierced the night’s darkness several shades beneath the greys and greens of the wilderness. It was the first urgal, soon joined by a couple others, emerging with their weapons drawn. Glenwing drew his curved, shining spear, and glanced towards Arya. Arya nodded forward.
“We should keep moving,” he said. “We can’t let them stop us, not now.” He clutched in his other, gauntleted hand the satchel they had snatched out of the Empire’s clutches. This was worth more than their lives, for sure, but it couldn’t go anywhere without their lives. Faolin kept his eye on his surroundings. The bushes around them began rustling again. That didn’t stop Glenwing. He snapped his reins and his courser charged. He lowered his spear.
Another ambusher sprung from the side of the incline, and knocked Glenwing off his horse. The horse plowed into the urgals at the end of the path, but his cries were silenced seconds later, following the sound of steel sliding between flesh and bone. Faolin drew his bow, and shot the ambusher beating against Glenwing.
The urgal dropped off of Glenwing, allowing him to get up, but the ambushers at the end of the hill came charging up. Faolin filled them with arrows as well.
“Go! Go!” Arya commanded.
“Not without you, princess,” Faolin said. There were more than three bodies on the road by now, two rolling back down and into the gully. There were heavier footsteps up ahead.
A horse head sailed through the air, landing at the hooves of Arya’s horse. Her’s reared back, and panicked. She held on, but not before another pair of ambushers leapt from the bushes. The first, Faolin bashed aside with his bow. The second reached his horse, and threw him from his reins. Glenwing’s spear, thrown from a short distance away, skewered that ambusher. He tossed the satchel to Arya. She caught it and tried charging down the gully.
She skidded to a stop, staring into the darkness, at the last ambusher. Faolin chased her down into the gully.
A single land-bridge separated the two halves of the gully here. At one side, Faolin and Arya squared off. Glenwing started after him, but a pair of crossbow bolts hamstrung him. By the time he made it to the bottom, he lost balance and fell. His scream echoed from below, but Faolin couldn’t hear a thud or a crack. The ambushers at the top of the hill lowered their crossbows. When Faolin followed Arya’s gaze, he could see why.
A massive figure clad from head to toe in furs, and interlocking plates of armor stood in the way. In his hands he held a blood-stained claymore, hilted with a sculpture of a ghostly face, whose crossguard bore the shape of outstretched bony fingers. The amethyst on his pommel glinted brighter than the blood stained steel. The figure himself wore a beaked helmet intricately sculpted with a skull-shaped visor, while his pauldrons were sculpted with the cross-sworded, shield-bearing signage of Galbatorix’s empire.
He raised his sword, pointing its serrated edge in Arya’s and Faolin’s direction.
“How audacious,” he said. His voice sounded hollow, like the warmth and depth of a mortal voice had just been pulled from his throat, and replaced with a pool of freezing water. “How brazen of you to take the only ways that His Excellency’s men won’t reach.” He flourished his sword, easily big enough for two hands or even two men, but wielded with swift ease here, and drove it point-first into the dirt in front of him. “It’s a shame we can’t allow you to leave. A war with the elves is the last thing anyone wants, no?”
Faolin couldn’t trust the sarcasm dripping from the armored figure’s voice. He couldn’t trust the red, beady eyes glimmering behind the visor of his helmet. Of course, anyone dressed in the tresses of death only dealt in it. The figure’s cloak billowed, tattered in places, trimmed with the burn marks of fires. The gust of wind brought a chill to Faolin’s rapidly-beating heart. He reached to his hip, towards his scabbarded blade. He glanced to Arya, for orders.
Arya didn’t answer him. She clutched the satchel tighter. She was shaking, constantly glancing to the gorge, where Glenwing had fallen. She choked the moment the thud finally rang through it.
“Not much for conversation, are we?” the shade of a man said. “I’m afraid you’ll need to speak up if you want to pass. I won’t yield until you return them to His Excellency.” He outstretched a gauntleted hand, fingers twitching in beckoning.
Arya handed Faolin the satchel. The weight of it he had felt leagues behind them as they gathered their prize together felt only a third as heavy.
“I’ve got the others,” Arya whispered. “Take the third to him, meet him halfway, but slip away any way you can.” She intoned, hand reaching down to grasp his shoulder tightly: “Don’t waste your life, Faolin.” He looked into the satchel. It was only one piece of the prize: a blue egg, glowing with a lapis surface in the moonlight. He quickly closed it, and turned to the armored figure at the other end of the bridge. The urgals behind them began to chant, in their sloppy way:
“Fight ‘em, Durza! Fight! Fight! Fight!”
“Durza’s got ‘em cornered! The boss is the strongest!”
Faolin took his first step onto the bridge. The man at the other end, Durza, it seemed, laughed through his helmet.
“Why fight when we can extract each and every thing we want piece by piece, my friends?” he said. His voice boomed just loud enough for the urgals to hear it. They fell silent for a moment, before they started hooting again. Faolin eased his hand off his sword, and glanced to his sides. There was barely two yards of space to work with between him and the chasm that claimed Glenwing. “Hand it over!” Durza said again. He took his first steps onto the bridge, blade in hand.
Arya looked ready to send her horse in a gallop alongside the edge of the gully, to head north. The urgals still chanted and hooted. If they were paying attention, they still had their weapons lowered.
Faolin took this as his opportunity. He charged forward. He lowered his shoulders, and kept his head down, arms clutching the egg in its mostly-empty satchel. He plowed into Durza. He felt him budge, and turn, sending him sailing into the grasses behind Durza. He tumbled forward, and caught himself in a forward roll. Once on his feet again, he caught a glance behind him: Durza was striding to him like a man who couldn’t quite run. His shadow loomed over Faolin. There was something about his walk that seemed more confident than slowed.
When Faolin took off again, he stumbled again, this time against something fleshy. His glance back caught the side of Glenwing’s horse, wounded with a gaping open wound in the chest, and nothing but a neck stump where his head should have been. It gave him pause, enough for him to hear Durza:
"Eitha medh vindr"
The wind picked up again. Durza outstretched his hand, and thrust an open palm to Faolin. A concentrated gust knocked the wind out of him, and sent him flying further. He felt something hit him, then he felt himself crash to the ground. The egg barely stayed in his arms, but when he managed to get a look up, he couldn’t feel his legs. He tried to catch his breath, but Durza caught up to him. He could see the spurs on his greaves, and those beady eyes staring down at him.
“Pathetic,” he said. He wiped the blood off his sword onto his cloak. The sword bore runes in the ancient language: Eld Deyja Varas . The Slayer of Spring. Pathetic, indeed , Faolin thought as he found himself admiring the cruel briars sculpted on the blade. Durza sheathed it, and knelt down before his crumpled body. “What do you think you’ve done by coming out here, just to take one egg, hm? His Excellency has others, many to replace this little batch.”
Faolin held the egg tighter against his chest. He couldn’t answer, not with his breath still catching up to him. Durza shrugged, pacing about as he spoke. With his back facing Faolin, he saw the coat of arms painted in a wine-colored shade: an asp wrapped over a woodsman’s axe. It was new, for sure. No other elf, Dragon Rider or otherwise, had seen the new human noble houses of Alagaesia. Faolin hadn’t paid much attention to politics before Arya’s mission, but he already thought them all to be plunderers and tyrants, like their master.
“It would be much easier for you to hand over that egg right now, wouldn’t it? You’re not going to get very far with … hm, let me see…” Durza raised his hand to his face thoughtfully. His eyes glinted brighter as he spoke: “ Stund lifs. ” He paused, then chuckled. “It looks like you won’t be able to walk for the rest of your life… Were I a healer and not the end of your mercy, I’d advise you to find a horse and stay on it, but…” He glanced back at the headless carcass behind him, and chuckled. “...I’m afraid instead I will have to visit a number of horrors upon you personally.”
Faolin glanced towards the gorge. Arya and the urgals were nowhere to be seen. So why was Durza so invested here? He pulled the egg from its satchel, and kept his eye on the gorge. It must have been about twelve yards by now. He shifted, now that his breath was back. He couldn’t move his legs, but he managed to push himself to sit. Durza watched him.
“My spell only tracks your life without … outside influence. I can see you have quite some time to live. Elves. How their immortality infuriates all sense of purpose, no?” He stepped closer again. Faolin felt Durza’s cold, gauntleted hand grasp his scalp, pulling at his hair, and lift him off the ground singlehandedly. Eld Deyja Varas was in his other hand.
Faolin let his arms fall slack. The egg was in his right. This was going to be it. I’m sorry, Arya , he thought. He looked into those glowing eyes while Durza reared his blade back, ready to thrust through him.
“It seems you elves aren’t much for last words either. Such a shame. In another life, I would have loved to dine.”
“But you’re already dead, aren’t you?” Faolin rasped. “You might as well be, serving Emperor Galbatorix.”
“Did I mention another of my lives? No. I meant one of yours .”
Just before Durza thrust Eld Deyja Varas through Faolin’s ribs and straight through his heart, Faolin threw the egg. It sailed over Durza’s helmet, and landed just at the edge of the gorge. It distracted Durza just enough for him to miss his mark. The wicked blade sank hilt-deep, but missed Faolin’s heart by nearly an inch. Durza dropped him again, and sprinted towards the gorge. The egg rolled off the edge.
Everything felt cold and heavy now. But Faolin thought of Arya and Glenwing -- he thought of the three of them, heading into this little task of theirs with bluster. He thought of the quiet trip into Uru’baen, blending in as performers. He thought of the humans they did meet on the road who didn’t mind them. He thought of the hope they had built just by the thoroughness of their plan. The elves as a whole weren’t going to stand up to Galbatorix, and hadn’t ever since the fall of the Dragon Riders, but that wasn’t going to stop Arya. She would get the others back home, he always figured.
Humans always said that death caused their lives to flash before their eyes, but he didn’t know that would apply to elves, ever. Youth and immortality never mixed; that regret infected Faolin even in his temporary victory.
Watching Durza lean over the gorge, screaming and shrieking brought a grin to his face. That was for Glenwing, he wanted to manage, but all that came out was a gob of blood.
Durza returned to him, his armor rising and falling, hyperventilating. He yanked the sword from Faolin again, and reared it back in both hands, as if it had grown heavier. It came down, and ended Faolin’s life.