Almost unanimously, you
took your seat by the fire. Seeing that even battered and blooded, the pilgrim still stands fill me with DETERMINATION. PSA: There may be another update this evening.
3.4 Weight of Promises
The thought appeared in your mind to crawl into the night, to the place that was given to you, and avoid pain and shame both; but then you remembered the words of the pious Desiderius of how Liefs were recognized for their ferocity, and so you sat by the fire. All laughed at that, and soon enough, you saw the javelin be put in the ground before you, and reached for it again. And although you detested that, you quivered and you quaked as you stood with it in hand, once more goaded by Cu to lunge at him.
What followed did not hurt any less than on the day before, and the men found a new way for Cu to punish you for their amusement, and their ideas brought great amusement to them, and great shame upon you. And they said that it was a good thing that they took such an useless thing as you on the way, and that they would loathe when the time came for you to be parted from them, and at that, they roared in laughter again, and one of them – whose name was Dagobert – dragged you away from the fire, and threw you into mud.
Then, on the next day, you watched the river flow, grey waters under grey sky, and come night, you sat by the fire and grasped at the javelin, and afterwards prayed and cried in the dark. And then, on the next night, you sat by the fire, and grasped at the javelin, and prayed and cried in the dark. And then on the next night, you sat by the fire and grasped at the javelin, and later found that your tears had dried up and your throat was too raw to pray.
***
You have unlocked ferocity! It is your virtue that you know that your body will give in before your spirit does.
***
Also during those gray days and terrible nights, you had noticed something else which seemed to you rather puzzling, and that is that although each evening, Notker's men seemed to be amused even more than before, and their laughs were like the bellowing of great beasts or tolling of brazen bells, Cu's mirth declined with each night; so much that on the fifth night of your ordeal, he did not share their laugh and in fact seemed to you very somber and perhaps brooding in how he went about dealing with you.
On the following day, which was the sixth since your departure from the mighty city of Grace, as you sat on the barge and watched the water flow, which was how you tended to spend most of your days, and thought about various matters which came to you (such as how it was barely over fortnight since you had left your family's home, and yet it seemed to you a very long time, almost as if a year had passed, or perhaps that it was in a different life altogether), you saw a strange sign. That is, a flock of birds was spotted taking flight over the bog, and the shape of the flock was that of an axe-head, and men who were with Notker spoke about it and thought it a bad omen. But while they argued about it, and how they should avert such ill luck that was made apparent to them, you noticed that Cu sat aside from them and with his arms spread to the sky, prayed fervently and with utmost ardour in the tongue of the people from the Rosemary Island. His prayers were strange to you for such reasons: that you had not seen him pray before (nor in fact any of Notker's men; they were quick to blasphemy, but never devotion) and that the words he spoke did not sound at all that saintly, and you considered that he may be venerating idols with them. However, he then commenced a prayer in the language of the Liefs; but that too appeared to you to be of rather perplexing nature, for he was invoking the name of Saint Corvo (which, you reasoned, came from the fact that he too was an exile), but also the name of Saint Amaulf, who was the gatekepper of the abode of the Saints, and therefore invoked chiefly by those who were at the threshold of the life everlasting, and leaving the temporal behind.
Then came the time to make land for the night, and you did so on a clearing that was once a village, and some walls of the homes that once stood on those grounds were still upright, as were the foundations of a shrine that had been erected there in more favourable times. As you were set to your various onerous duties, and watched the rest Notker's men set up a camp, you also noticed that Cu procured himself a new spear, which was longer than the javelin he carried, and wrapped in fabric, so that the spear-head would not be seen; he carried it in one hand, and his javelin in the other. And then then, as you took your seat by the fire, and he approached, Notker stopped him and warned him that in two days' time, the barge will reach Pebbles (whether it was a name of a city or a trade emporium, you did not know) and therefore he should take great care not to mark you with bruises or wounds, and to that Cu agreed, and compared to previous nights, your humiliations were not at all that bad, although the carefulness exhibited by Cu seemed to disappoint others; due to that games were soon over, and the fire was smothered, and you were allowed to find yourself a place in the night to sleep; all that happened on the night of the new moon.
But Cu merely pretended to be as soundly asleep as the others, and when he was sure he would not be noticed, he sneaked up on you and woke you up, and bade you not to speak anything but to follow him, and he led you to the ruin of the shrine, which was made from stone, and therefore offered a measure of protection from eyes and ears. And there he set a low fire, and told you a story, which will be here related:
When the king's decree that he was to be exiled from the Rosemary Island for seven years reached him, being young and therefore not yet armed with unyielding firmness of spirit, he sought a soothsayer, although that was forbidden by the saintly faith, and asked him if he will ever return from the banishment, and the soothsayer looked first into fire, then into the guts of a goat, and gave him such a promise: that he would be surely returned from his banishment, unless he was to find a lynx that sails and the hind that is not a hind. And that prophecy seemed to him a very auspicious one, and he left his home island glad that unless such an impossible occurrence was to come to be, he would be surely returned, perhaps even rich in booth of the foreign lands.
Upon telling you that, he laughed, and then brought near the fire the other spear that he had, and he showed it to you, for it was of the most beautiful worksmanship, and he explained that it was the spear of his father, and of the father of his father before him, and before that it was wielded by the first men who came to the Rosemary Island to win it from those who had held it previously, and that it had a name which in the language of the Liefs would mean "the Rye-stalk". And then he told you that he took the spear with him into the exile knowing that he would be surely returned, and he laughed again.
Then he explained to you such things: that Reik and Notker were intending to sell you in Pebbels, for a good price could be fetched for one such as you, and that to walk through the bogs in the night would surely be the death of you, but in the light of the day, secret paths could perhaps be made apparent, and that although hostile, the swamps could be traversed, all the way to the city of Pillars or perhaps as far as the city of Breakers.
Then, the fire that he had set begun to dim, and so he came closer and smiled and he said to you such a thing: that you should respect fate, but never fear it. And then he came even closer, and as the last of the light died away, he asked you if you can swear by the names of all the Saints, and by the stars, and the moon, and the sun, and the earth that you walk, and the see that is deep, and the mountains that are high, that you will not cease in your pursuit of the city of Step, no matter what the road takes you. And then, he asked you if you can spend this night in his arms.
You looked at him, and before the light went out, you…
[ ] Made the oath and agreed to be with him.
[ ] Made the oath but did not agree to be with him.
[ ] Did not make the oath, but agreed to be with him.
[ ] Did not make the oath and did not agree to be with him.
)
