Father and Father We Go

he night lay moonless over Blue Brea Woods, the stars vanishing and returning through gaps in a slow migration of cloud. Jaeshu guided the grey mare at an easy walk, loose enough on the reins to let the animal choose her footing along the narrow path. Lunara rode behind him with one hand resting against his side and the other near her bow. Wind moved softly through the upper branches, stirring leaves overhead and carrying the damp smell of earth, bark, and fern. Neither of them had spoken for some time.

Jaeshu appeared perfectly content with this.

Despite all the patience her life of archery required, Lunara was not.

“Why do you think they call this place Blue Brea Woods?”

The ranger ignored her.

“I grew up with two older brothers,” she said.

The ranger glanced slightly over his shoulder, perhaps to confirm she was speaking to him. “I know.”

He faced forward again.

Lunara waited for something more. Nothing came. The mare continued its gait through the woods with the patient rhythm of an animal that had already decided the humans on her back were responsible for whatever foolishness happened next.

“Navian was always the bigger one,” Lunara continued. “Strong. Steady. Thought most problems could be solved by standing between them and everyone else.” She smiled faintly into the dark. “Usually while holding something sharp.”

Jaeshu gave a quiet sound of acknowledgment.

“Gaz was different. Books, mostly. Questions. He’d disappear for half a day and we’d find him somewhere reading something nobody else could understand.” She shifted with the mare as the path dipped between two old trees. “Magic found him early. Or he found it. I’m still not sure which version he prefers.”

Another small sound from Jaeshu.

Lunara stared at the back of his hood.

“You’re very good at this.”

“At what?”

“This.”

He looked back again.

She gestured vaguely between them. “Conversation.”

“I’m listening.”

“Yes. Aggressively.”

The corner of his mouth moved before he turned away. Lunara took the victory and continued.

“When things fell apart in our family, we went different ways. Navian went west. Gaz went south. They both seemed to know where they were going.” She watched the trees pass slowly beside them. “I didn’t, I guess.”

This time the ranger said nothing at all.

“Bahlara was still home, though. Or close enough. Forests everywhere once you got far enough from the roads. I started spending more time there.” Lunara’s fingers moved absently along the wood of her bow. “Animals always made more sense to me than people did. They don’t lie very well. A wolf tells you when you’ve come too close, y’know? Even the things trying to eat you are usually honest about it.”

“Usually.”

She blinked. “A whole word.”

Jaeshu rode on.

The young archer smiled and went on. “I started carrying a bow because I needed a way to stop something before it got to me. At first I was terrible. Missed trees.”

He gave another faint huff, and Lunara settled a little more comfortably behind him. “But I got better. Had to. Orath got closer. Frightened the animals out of whole stretches of forest. Tore through my friends’ nests, dens—anything they could reach. I hated that.”

Her hand rested over the bow again. “So I learned where to stand. How far ahead of something you had to aim when it stopped running in a straight line.”

Jaeshu nodded once. “That explains tonight.”

She frowned. “What does?”

“Your shooting.”

Lunara waited.

“At the stable,” he said. “Two shots. Both clean. No hesitation. I’ve known archers who spent their entire lives with a bow and couldn’t do that.”

The praise caught her more cleanly than she expected. She looked away into the dark even though Jaeshu could not see her face.

“I suppose two of them could.” Lunara gave a pleased little cackle.

He sighed.

They rode for a while after that, and Lunara made an honest attempt to leave the silence alone. The Blue Brea Woods closed quietly around them, the path threading between trunks and low brush beneath a shifting roof of leaves. The mare’s ears turned toward sounds too distant for either rider to hear, then relaxed again. Jaeshu watched the darkness ahead with the same tireless attention he seemed to give everything, as though the forest itself might eventually make a mistake if he stared at it long enough.

Lunara lasted perhaps three minutes.

“So... Av’elyth is an elf.”

The ranger nodded.

“And Karneth is a dwarf?”

“Yes.”

“And Gaz and I are human.”

The ranger’s shoulders shifted slightly. “I’ve gathered.”

Lunara leaned just enough to see the side of his face beneath the hood. “Are you human?”

That finally earned her a proper look.

“What?”

“Are you a human?”

“Of course I am.”

“Are you sure?”

Jaeshu stared at her.

“Because humans actually talk to one another.” Lunara sat back, satisfied. “We share things about ourselves.”

For several seconds he said nothing. Then his eyes narrowed. Jaeshu faced forward again with the expression of a man discovering that he had stepped onto a trap.

Lunara smiled sweetly and poked the back of his head. “I think you’re half gargoyle.”

He gave a long exhale through his nose.

“There. That noise. Very gargoyle.”

“Do you ever stop talking?”

“Usually when people answer me.”

Another long breath came from the ranger, this one surrendering rather more than air. “Maldaria.”

Lunara quieted.

“That’s where I’m from,” he said. “If you insist on proving I’m human.”

“I’m listening.”

“It wasn’t much of a place. Roads through it. Farms. People coming and going.” His hands remained easy on the reins, though his voice lost the dry edge it had carried a moment before. “My father left when I was young. Went north with the army during the Third War. Told us he would be home before winter turned.”

The mare walked on beneath them.

“They were marching for the Ironspines,” Jaeshu said. “No one from his company came back.”

The young archer rode quietly behind him, her shoulders rising and falling with the mare’s slow gait.

“My mother waited longer than anyone else did. Years, in her own way.” The ranger watched the dark ahead. “Things got worse after the war. Roads became dangerous. Creatures started wandering farther south. Orath, as you said. And one night they came through our land.”

He did not tell her what kind.

“Took her from me and my brother.”

Lunara said nothing.

“Then he got sick not long after.” Jaeshu’s thumb passed once across the leather of the reins. “Held on longer than our apothecaries thought he would.”

The silence Lunara had fought so hard to fill suddenly became the only decent thing she could offer him.

“After that, I left. Little reason to stay,” he continued. “Guard work at first. Caravans. Hunting. Whatever paid and kept me moving. Some of it honorable. Some of it paid.”

The archer leaned slightly, trying to read his face. He gave her nothing.

“Eventually I found the Brokenbriar.”

Lunara’s attention sharpened. “You were a Brokenbriar Ranger?”

“I was.”

She waited, but there was something final in the way he said it.

“What happened?”

Jaeshu’s shoulders tightened. “Not tonight.”

For once Lunara accepted the boundary without touching it.

Jaeshu looked through the trees, toward a north hidden far beyond them. “If we reach the Ironspines, there may still be someone who knows what happened to my father. A grave. A name in a ledger. Someone who remembers where his company went.” His voice lowered. “Anything.”

For a while there was only the horse beneath them and the wind moving through the canopy.

“I’m sorry,” Lunara said.

Jaeshu nodded.

“For your father. And your mother. Your brother. All of it.”

Another nod as he straightened himself, as if remembering who he was.

She let a few moments pass before curiosity, gentler now, got the better of her. “Do you have children?”

Nothing.

Lunara immediately wished she could pull the question back.

“Yeah,” he said.

She waited.

Nothing again.

“How many?”

Jaeshu looked over his shoulder.

She lifted both hands in surrender. “Right. Sorry.”

He faced forward again.

“Wife?”

“Lunara.”

“Understood.”

She smiled despite herself and leaned into the rhythm of the mare. “So maybe only a quarter gargoyle...”

A sudden rush of movement came from the brush to their right.

Jaeshu hauled the reins short and turned in the saddle, one hand drawing his sword. The mare tossed her head, startled by him more than the noise.

Lunara caught his wrist.

“It’s a boar.”

He looked at her.

From beneath the brush waddled a young boar scarcely larger than a lamb, snuffling irritably as it crossed the path before them. It paused once to regard horse and riders with profound disinterest, then trotted between the trees on the other side and into the night.

Jaeshu slowly returned his weapon to its sheath. “Not a word.”

Lunara’s mouth was already curling.

“I didn’t say anything! I was only thinking.”

Jaeshu reached for his pipe.

“Keep doing that.”

She laughed softly as he clicked his tongue and set the mare walking again.

This time the silence that followed lasted longer.

Lunara found she did not mind it quite as much.

Gaz had tried closing his eyes.

The first time, Tony died again.

The second time, Av’elyth did.

After that the wizard stopped pretending sleep would come.

The cave had settled around its survivors in uneasy layers of shadow. The coals were nearly spent, their dull red light barely reaching the ivy that veiled the entrance. Oesora slept near the mouth beneath her cloak, one arm tucked under her head. His brother sat against the stone with his sword within reach, though Gaz doubted his brother had slept at all. Navian remained beside Av’elyth exactly where he had been when the others finally stopped moving for the night.

She had always seemed impossible to catch.

That was the thought he could not rid himself of.

The elf moved faster than any of them. She had crossed battlefields as though the rest of the world were laboring through deep water, appearing where she should not have been, then vanishing before steel arrived. Gaz had watched Mottled fall without ever touching her. He had watched Crimsons fail to keep pace with her.

Yet still something reached her.

His mind supplied Tony before he could stop it: the forest, the violence of it, the horrifying speed with which one man could become several pieces.

A week.

That was all it had been.

A week since Navian’s message had drawn them together, and already one of them had been torn apart and another lay close enough to death that a priestess had refused to promise morning.

Gaz looked toward the cave entrance.

Lunara was somewhere beyond it in the night, somewhere beneath the dark canopy of the Blue Brea Woods. He knew Jaeshu was with her. He knew the ranger was skilled as well. He knew the errand had been necessary. None of those facts helped.

If an elven assassin could be brought down, what protection did speed offer Lunara? What did strength promise Navian? What did his knowledge promise any of them?

The scholar looked at his older brother sitting beside the rogue and felt, for the first time since answering Navian’s call, the full stupidity of what they had done.

Not the purpose.

The reality of it.

They had walked, willingly of all things, toward the very wrath that had spent three wars teaching Aranthor how easily brave people died.

His thoughts went south and east before he could restrain them, across roads and distance to Veniri. To a house he had warded until his hands shook. To doors he had checked twice before leaving and then a third time because twice had felt suddenly irresponsible. To his wife. To Aaron. To Owen. Family.

What if...

Gaz shook his head and rose quietly before those thoughts could become something worse.

Karneth sat awake near the coals with an axe across his thighs, one broad hand loosely around the haft. His wounds had been tended, though dried blood still darkened one sleeve. The dwarf had the particular stillness of someone who had been pretending to rest for the benefit of everyone else.

He looked up as Gaz approached.

“The hell kinda name is Gaz.”

The wizard gave a weak smile. “The full name is actually Gazgorxory.”

Karneth looked at him for a long moment, clearly calculating something he did not enjoy.

“Gaz.”

“Gaz.”

The dwarf shifted enough to make room beside the fire and offered him a battered cup. Gaz accepted it, sniffed once, and looked at the dwarf.

“What is this?”

“Drink.”

Gaz took a cautious swallow and regretted it immediately. Karneth’s beard moved with a small smile.

The wizard handed the cup back. “I believe you have discovered a substance capable of killing Orath.”

“Would save us some walkin’.”

Gaz sat beside him.

“Can’t sleep?” the dwarf quietly asked.

Gaz shook his head.

For a little while neither spoke. The humor faded without effort, leaving behind the quiet crackle of the coals and the breathing of those asleep around them. Karneth glanced once toward Av’elyth, then toward Gaz.

“You’ve been watchin’ her half the night.”

The scholar folded his hands between his knees. “Have I?”

“Aye.”

Gaz looked again toward the wounded elf. Navian had shifted sometime in the last few minutes, one hand resting beside Av’elyth’s shoulder as though proximity alone could keep her anchored there.

“Tony died in front of us,” Gaz said. “And not gently.”

Karneth’s expression changed.

“We barely knew him.” Gaz swallowed. “But I find that makes remarkably little difference.”

Karneth stared into the coals. “No.”

“My sister is out there,” the wizard said, turning his gaze to the mouth of the cave.

“Not alone,” the dwarf reminded.

“I know.”

“He’ll bring her back.”

“I know that too.”

Karneth finally looked at him. “Knowing a thing doesn’t always quiet it, does it?”

“No.” Gaz gave a humorless smile. “Knowing a thing often blinds us to what remains unseen.”

The dwarf squinted and slowly nodded, trying to keep up.

Another coal collapsed inward, briefly brightening both their faces. The wizard tipped the end of his staff toward the fire with a whisper, and the flame grew softly anew.

“I have spent most of my life believing that if I understood enough, I could make sensible choices. Learn the dangers and the rules that govern them. Then prepare accordingly.” He flipped the lower part of his robes toward the fire to dry it. “I am beginning to suspect the world finds that amusing.”

Karneth grunted. “World’s an arsehole.”

That drew a small laugh from Gaz despite himself. Then the scholar’s head turned to the entrance, eyes searching for something far beyond the horizon. The dwarf knew the look.

“You leave someone behind?”

“My family.”

The dwarf turned toward him.

“Two boys. Aaron and Owen. Back in Ivory Veniri with their mother.” For the first time since sitting down, Gaz’s expression softened without effort. “Aaron is nearly a man now, which he has taken to mean that any advice from his father is automatically several years obsolete. He reads everything he can find and then corrects people who were wise enough not to ask.”

Karneth chuckled. “Good lad.”

“He would agree with you.”

“And the other?”

“Owen.” Gaz smiled down at his hands. “More fire than caution. He believes locked doors are merely questions asked in wood.”

“A better lad.” The dwarf’s chuckle became something warmer.

“I warded the house before I left,” Gaz continued. “Every door. Every window. The grounds. Half the roads, if I am being honest. My wife finally told me that if I placed another rune over the kitchen, she would take my staff in my sleep and feed it to the woodland beavers.”

Karneth passed him the cup again. This time the wizard drank without inspecting it first, which the dwarf seemed to take as progress.

“When my brother sent word,” Gaz said, “I told myself I was needed in Veniri. That someone with more experience should answer. Someone better suited to... this.” He gestured faintly toward the blood on his robe, the unconscious elf beyond it, the darkness outside.

“What changed?”

“Nothing.” Gaz stared at the dying fire. “That was the problem. If Orath is rising again, sitting beside my children does not protect them. It merely lets me watch the danger arrive.”

Karneth’s eyes lowered.

Gaz noticed. “You understand.”

The warrior gave a low grunt.

“Ah, the dwarf has children.”

“Aye.”

The answer surprised him enough that Gaz turned fully.

Karneth’s mouth pulled slightly to one side. “What? Dwarves reproduce.”

“I had assumed there were furnaces involved.”

“Careful, wizard.”

Gaz smiled.

The dwarf looked down at the axe across his thighs. “Mason and Gwen.”

Gaz’s expression shifted. “Those are your children’s names?”

“Aye.”

“I’ve heard you call your axes that.”

“Also aye.”

Karneth turned the weapon enough for the dying fire to travel along its pale metal. “Silver one’s Gwen. Bronze one’s Mason.”

Gaz smiled softly. “Beautiful.”

“Mason’s near grown,” Karneth continued, and something changed in his face when he spoke now, a hardness loosening around the eyes. “Works the forge with my sister’s folk back in Taarn Castali. Boy swings a hammer like the mountain insulted his mother. Strong, too. Knows it, which is unfortunate.”

Gaz laughed under his breath.

“Gwen’s different,” Karneth said. “Sharper than Mason. Quicker upstairs. Tell her the sky’s blue and she’ll want to know who decided, what shade, and whether whoever named it had proper authority.” Pride crept shamelessly into his voice. “Stubborn little thing. Hates horses.”

The dwarf’s hand stayed on the axe as he spoke, his thumb resting absently near its head.

“They’re with my sister,” he continued. “Safe enough. Or what passes for it now. Told them I was goin’ after coin. Work down south. Said I’d be home before the first snow.”

“And they believed you?”

“Mason did.”

“Gwen?”

Karneth gave him a flat look. “Of course not.”

The two men sat with that, the fire shrinking between them.

Gaz looked across the cave again. Oesora had not moved. Navian still kept his place beside Av’elyth, though his head had lowered slightly with exhaustion. The paladin’s hand remained close to his sword. Even asleep, no one here seemed entirely willing to surrender to it.

“Perhaps I am simply being seduced by the doubts the night often brings,” the wizard mused. “We haven’t gone very far, and yet we already find ourselves in mortally dire straits.”

“Marketplace didn’t inspire confidence.”

Gaz groaned quietly.

Karneth glanced at him. “Heard they’ve started callin’ it the Marketplace Massacre.”

Gaz slowly turned his head. “They have not.”

“Ranger called it that.”

The wizard closed his eyes. “So our first great contribution to history already has a title.”

“Catchy one.”

“Honored.”

Karneth took the cup back and finished what remained. “Three humans runnin’ around tryin’ to save everyone and somehow makin’ the whole thing worse. Felt sorry for you back then.”

Gaz gave him a sidelong look. “And now?”

The dwarf considered.

“Now I think the three of you are damn lucky I came along.”

A reluctant smile broke across Gaz’s face. “We are, oh, warrior dwarf of Taarn Castali.”

The laughter did not last long, nor did it need to. When it faded, what remained between them was easier than the silence that had come before.

Gaz leaned back against the stone. “Would you have stayed back home if you had known?”

Karneth understood the question without asking what he meant.

Tony.

Av’elyth.

The blood.

The few awful days behind them and whatever waited beyond the cave.

He looked at the silver axe beneath his hand.

“Nah.”

Gaz studied him.

“I’d have come anyway,” Karneth said. “But... maybe I’d have hugged ’em a tad longer before I left.”

The wizard looked toward the coals.

“Yes,” he said after a while. “Yes.”

Neither man called the answer brave. Neither mistook it for comfort. For the road had already shown them what it could take.

Somewhere beyond the ivy, Lunara was still making her way through the Blue Brea Woods. Navian sat beside a woman who might yet die before dawn. Tony would never return from the forest at all.

Gaz watched the last coal settle into ash.

They had made the right choice. As fathers.

But for that night, neither man was foolish enough to believe that meant they would survive it.