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  The Dove amongst the Crows.

  Septiem 10th, 1125 Dom.

  We sat around the oak bench, the horn of wine in front of me fizzing and bubbling with smalls seeds of fruit. Raisins of heavenberry bobbing up on the purple surface. A mustached man dropped a bundle of firewood deep into the yellow stomach of the pit, fires rose high above on the matchstick stack of logs. The camp sites and tables rose their heads to the sudden flare up. Then laughed. Some locked in arms and going to fast dance with the nurses and handmaidens. Men and women came in and out of my vision with hot plates of food, ducking and dodging strings of shiny metal belts attached at the cornices of tents and pole tops. To my rear, behind what looked like a black smiths anvil, a man vomited into the dried grass.

  “He doesn’t talk. He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t do anything but stare. I think he's a statue.” Obrick prodded my cheek with his finger.

  “Knock it off.” Kal said.

  “Whatever.” Obrick grabbed the mug and finished it in one gulp, purple dripping from the sides of his mouth. He burped.

  Sylas looked up from his plate and sucked his teeth, he lowered and nibbled at some leg of meat, chewing it like cobbed corn.

  “What’s wrong with you today?” Obrick asked.

  “I’ll tell you later.” My hands on my lap, I fiddled with the long shirt, picking at small threads.

  “Why can’t you tell me now?” Obrick leaned into me.

  “Knock it off.” Kal grabbed Obrick and they both put each others arms against each others necks, vying for leverage on the wooden bench.

  “Fight. Fight.” The Silverfangs said in synchronized, eerie speech. “Fight. Fight. Fight.”

  Sylas sipped on his wine. I sighed and stood. The two fell to the floor, still gripping each other in almost lover-like embrace.

  Vincent hit the side of a cup with his spoon. We all turned. He stood in front of the fire and from my vantage looked to be within it, cradling the yellow in his stomach. He wore his armor, the white cape and chest piece and the long furred neckline. Eyes piercing red in the darkness of deep evening. Around us the dried and empty leaved branches of sprawling trees. Like Joshuas, long branched and praying out to the sky, barren.

  “I’m glad we could all celebrate today.” He said. “And I’m sure you’re wondering what we’re celebrating.”

  “It’s a funeral, ain’t it?” Some toothless fool said in the crowd.

  “No.” Vincent said. “We will spend the rest of our lives in mourning and remembering, today is not for that. Today is to celebrate the fourteenth’s accomplishments. A cheer for them.”

  A mild whooping came across the crowd. Some clapping, smiles. Somewhere in the muddied faces, Gabralto spat.

  “And we’re here to celebrate all our accomplishments.” Vincent nodded. Men clapped louder, yelled louder. Their hands went high in sky.

  “And today we are here to celebrate where we’ll be going next. Our next destination will be our last, hopefully.”

  The clapping stopped. People turned their heads and muttered about themselves. Vincent looked around, smiling and coy.

  “Yes. That’s right. We’re done traveling.”

  “So is the…Flock over?

  “No. Far from it.” Vincent raised his clap. “I’m here to celebrate our new service. We’ve been hired by King Xerxes. As a mercenary company.”

  “A mercenary company?” They all whispered it. Thought it. The strange feeling of death coming across all of us like a cold chill, rising from the cool dirt up to our brains.

  “That’s right. We’ve been hired based on our accomplishments. And I am leveraging a deal for more. Yes, more. How would you all like to be paid a gold a job, hmm?”

  “A gold. How much is that in silver?” Lowell asked. His brother nudged him.

  “Could I even spend one gold coin?” Kal asked.

  “You just aren’t trying hard enough. I know a couple places we could put that gold to use.” Obrick laughed.

  “Now I know the transition will be…difficult.” Vincent said. “So I’ve elected that if you are uncomfortable with the new positions that you be allowed to leave. With severance.”

  “With severance?” Sylas forked a carrot.

  “If you don’t feel like I feel, if the idea of greatness seems to appalling or gaudy or terrible. Then leave. I won’t force you to mold yourself to greatness, I can only encourage it. Believe in it. No, no, gentleman. What becomes of the flock from here on out will be nothing short of legendary.”

  “You’re asking us to go to war.” I stood, palms on the bench. “Am I wrong in that, Vincent?”

  The crowd turned to me.

  “I’m asking you to fight for the country I know we can become. The Kushians come from the east. The Knights of the Rose from the south. The north is dissolving from Xerxes. And the country is eaten alive all the same. I mean - look at us? Look at how many desperate places we’ve helped, small things that the nation state should and could have handled. But won’t. And they wont-” He looked to me and nodded. “And Xerxes can’t help his people because he can’t even help himself. What future is that for us, for all of Xyra? Hmm? Or would you deny that all of you are not victims of war?”

  He leaned forward, almost small in the group. The fire burned on. Everyone stood, elevated on their benches or flat tree tops.

  “Were you all not orphaned? Were you all not turned revenged men? Grifters of the poor looking for some small pittance of coin? Are you all not the very miserable everyone will soon become?” Vincent, palms out, made a wide gesture. “I too am an orphan and I too understand the pain of loss, the pain of traveling and the wear on the feet of your soul. Would you not rest with me travelers? To plant yourselves into a dream.”

  “What dream?” I asked.

  Vincent smiled.

  “I would like us to become knighted. And I would like to be king.” The fires fell, his face lit from beneath his chin with a red hue. “I will be king. With your help, all of your help.”

  We stood quiet. Not a laugh. Not a comment or whisper.

  Someone coughed some spit into the floor.

  “You’re crazy, Vicentius.” He said. This stranger, an anonymous face amongst all faces. “But I’ll go wherever you go. Alls that matter is that you lead me. I mean, you haven’t done us wrong yet, right?”

  “That’s right. Trust in Vicentius is trust in his success. When have we failed?”

  “When have we lost?”

  “Who cares as long as the money is fine?”

  “If he’s king will that make us royalty?”

  “Think I could get a castle…?”

  And so it began amongst them. The drunk smiles and imaginations big and small that grew from these drunken conversations, people turning with each other and nodding up and down. The excitement growing. The fire growing. They raised their cups in singular joy, the wine spilled like rain from these dancing, singing people.

  “For Vicentius, the world!” One man chanted.

  “For Vicentius, the world!” Another said.

  The Silverfangs grabbed their cups and ran into the crowd. Obrick and Kal scratched their heads and shrugged. Sylas stood and walked out of the dinner, into the outer dark. And I…

  I grabbed a cup of wine and drank. What consolidation that meant is something elusive to me too. But I nodded when Vincent looked at me, and I sipped and raised the horn. The wine tasted sour.

 

  I believe that was the last night of what I would consider my vagabond life in Xyra. The memories are long past of America, of mother and father. Of yachts. Of Fucking Harvard.

 The plane was beautiful the morning after the party, somewhere in barely-dawn with the blue skyline taking shape on the even plain of the dry grasslands. I drifted from the caravan, just a moment to breath without the company of others, to not suffer a single foreign thought or voice. I wandered into the plains where yellow eased itself into a light green, somewhere in the desert amongst a small pond where the bracken had formed and the ground was slippery with mud and where the air buzzed with the life of small red-thumbed specimens, here amongst so much life. My hands sunk deep into a wet puddle, my body laid and flat and my eyes wandering out the distance to a country so tiny in scope that a quick grip of my extended palm, I could feel the world shrunk in me.

  Hands of a murderer. Of the merciful.

  I laid my head down on the grass and eased my eyes to rest, but not to sleep.

  What a gift it was to feel the boundaries of my body disperse on the prickle of grass, to feel the universe in me expanded to all width and yet to be as small as anything else.

  What dreams exist in that expanding dark, what dreams of many have decided me?

  Not a dream of boats. Not a dream of father. Not a dream of the easy life.

  I dream of crows. Of the home here, and the home waiting in remote lands, only arms length away. Waiting to be seized.

  It was a good dream.

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Author Note: That's the end of Book 1. Book 2 will be released soon, sometime in the next month. If you want updates on the Amazon edited version of my book or sneak peaks on Book 2, join the discord.

Thanks for reading!