Lost Lorilan

The wind in the crags made a high keening wail, like a banshee that calls to the dying,
As over the pass came the reavers of Bale, and above them the gorcrows came flying.
Ten score and three of the bravest of shiremen,
Stood in the path of their ire,
Hrithgar of Bale and a hundred score northmen,
Blood bent on pillage and fire.
But the roar of their charge could not drown in my ear what my lady had whispered to me fierce a clear,
To forsake not my oath to defend and preserve, and the want of my heart, so much more than deserved,
The desire of my heart would be mine.

My brothers in arms fought for family and home, for their wives, and their sons, and their daughters,
The northmen were threatening all they had known, and for this they were come to the slaughter.
Lorilan Lady of Auldgreen shire castle,
Long had I loved from afar,
Humbly and glad would I kneel beauty’s vassal,
Heedless, her life I would guard.
And the patter of rain, and the flickering light in the thunderhead’s bastions portended the fight,
And the clatter of shields, and cries of our foes, and the flashing of axes and swords that arose,
They foretold of the fate that was ours.

We stood on a hill that looked over the way, and I bellowed as northmen were forming,
“Eternity waits on our deeds done this day, in the face of an enemy swarming!”
Rank upon rank of the war-hardened northmen,
Rose like a storm driven wave,
Sweeping the flanks of our shieldwall and spearmen,
Driven by bloodlust and rage.
As they surged round the hill to the flanks and the rear, the men hastily circled and leveled their spears,
And then up rushed the first of the Bale to attack, and they slammed ‘gainst out shields, but we thrusted them back,
And the grim work of killing began.

They battered our line slaying one man in ten, ‘till our spears drove them back in disorder,
Again, and again, and a third time again, they reformed and assaulted our boarder.
Two men we slew then for each fallen shireman,
Such was the fury they showed,
Two men we slew and four more would replace them,
Never a moment they slowed.
And the wounded sank down in a grisly red mire, like tormented souls in the Pit’s lake of fire,
But we gave not a step and the reavers were stayed, and I shrieked like a demon and brandished my blade,
“The beloved of my heart shall be mine!”

At last there stood I, and a dozen beside me, the last of the Shire’s defenders,
They stared at their deaths and they smiled abiding, and no one gave thought to surrender.
“There,” I said, “Hrithgar of Bale defending,
“Let us not bow to our fate,
“Let us go make of that brigand an ending,
“So our own fates we will make!”
Then we charged down the hill, and we shattered their best, and I fought with abandon to drive through the press,
But a spear pierced my side, and I hacked at the shaft, and the blows fell like rain, and my enemy laughed,
And at last I bowed down, my life spent.

In silence unending, beneath a dark sky, neither moonlight nor stars were adorning,
I lay for eternity, helpless to rise, for the sun and for memory mourning.
Cold as bare stone was the place I lay dreaming,
Hard as the bones of the earth,
Shades from the past whispered words without meaning,
Lives by oblivion cursed.
Then at once from afar there arose a faint cry, and it called to my heart, and to those who were nigh,
For it carried such fear, and such pain and despair, as to torment my ears, and to lay my soul bare,
For ‘twas Lorilan, b’loved of my heart.

I struggled to rise, to cast off me the dreams, and rekindle the battle rage sleeping,
I struggled to sever the bonds all unseen, and deliver the men in my keeping.
“Vengeance!” I cried to the fallen around me,
“Rest ye not peacefully here!
“Terror and blood, and fell deeds still await thee!
“Hearken the voices so clear!”
For then high and away there came down a soft peal, made of hundreds of voices in pain and in fear,
And they knew by that sound what the northmen had done, on that day to their wives and their daughters and sons,
And they rose with a terrible will.

Through blackness we climbed up the barrier hills, across cliffs that were meant to confound us,
While gibbering voices repulsive and shrill, called our names from the darkness around us,
Thrice did the crawlers that watch try to thwart us,
Hard and so grim was our mien,
Thrice did those horrors fall back from before us,
Joining the voices unseen.
At the last a tall knight our passage denied, and his head was surmounted by antlers spread wide,
And he gazed down at length as though searching our souls, and he sighed as though seeing exacted a toll,
Then the great horned king stepped aside.

The castle at Auldgreen shire loomed in the night, as we rose like the mist, terror bringing,
Its walls did not hinder, we needed no light, as we searched for the revelers singing.
Hrithgar of Bale and his blood spattered clansmen,
Paused in the midst of their feast,
Vengeance they saw in the faces of the dead men,
Hatred from Hades released.
And the screams of those northmen still echo on nights when the mist rises up and the moon is not bright,
For on Hrithgar we fell, and his body was torn, and we hunted his clansmen until the grey morn,
And we left not a northman alive.

The halls are now empty, the hearthstones are cold, and the walls have been breached by the ages,
Abandoned and shunned by its people of old, now forgotten by all but the sages.
Lorilan Lady of Auldgreen, forsaken,
Years have I searched without sign,
B’loved of my heart, whither angels have taken,
Never your love shall be mine.
There are songbirds now nesting where men fought and died, and new life is encroaching upon every side,
But I still roam these corridors, courtyards, and tombs, for eternity caught in a netherworld gloom,
As I search for my lost Lorilan.