Hal - The Duellist #1

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Dal Reniac

"I heard rumours about Marta Ilenga," she coaxed.

His smile broadened even further and he let out a long, low whistle. "Ah, Marta," he said at last. "What a woman."

"So?" She asked, frustrated. "Is it true?"

He turned to her and pushed his hat back on his head. "No, it isn't. Although I can't say I didn't try." Franc fixed his gaze on the forest floor once more, and she noticed a hardness enter his eyes, his jaw clench and the release. "I'm a bit too rough and ready for a woman of her tastes. And she has very refined tastes, does Marta. A great connoisseur of the finer things in life ─ a real patron of young poets and artists ─ particularly handsome young poets and artists."

"I see." She decided not to pursue it any further. The wagon bumped its way along the track, and she became lost in her own thoughts.

"And you, Hal. What is it about this young lass that you're so enamoured of? Would it not be anything to do with the fact that she's Bruno Nérac's wife? I mean, forbidden love is always more enticing ─ or so I've heard."

"She wasn't Nérac's wife when I first met her."

"But she was Léac's daughter. You must have known the risks."

Hal sighed. "I suppose I did. Beric and Marc did their best to warn me, but..."

"But what?" He pulled on the horses' reins as they approached a squat stone bridge which spanned the river. "Whoa, lads, slow down now!" The wagon ground to a halt.

"I don't feel quite balanced without her, Franc. I can't explain it in any other way. It's as if she were a counterweight."

He gazed at her intently for some time, the piercing blue of his eyes somehow boring deep inside her. She looked away.

"We'll get her back, lass," he said at last gently. "We'll do whatever it takes to get her back."

"Thank you," she murmured.

He managed the horses as they trotted over the bridge and then they picked up pace on the other side of the glen's leafy floor before the path crept upwards towards the moors on the other side. The weight of grain sacks meant that they were now forced to dismount, and they led the straining animals upwards as the gloom of spruce and pine gave way to a lighter canopy of rowan interspersed with gorse. Heather formed a springy carpet amongst the shrubs and stunted trees, and suddenly they were following a sandy moorland track as it headed across the wild open plains between The Eagles' Nests and Dal Reniac.

"We'll not get there before nightfall," Hal observed with a shudder. The clouds were low and visibility was poor. The moors seemed so vast and lonely, and the only sounds were of unseen curlews, their piercing shrieks picked up and carried on the wind.

"It's better that way," Franc observed. "I'm known in Dal Reniac, of course ‒ there's no help for it. But they won't be able to make out your face so easily in the dark."

The horses wound their laborious way over ground which had been churned to mush by the wet weather. Occasionally, Hal and Franc were forced to dismount and push or pull the wagon across boggy stretches. The journey took its toll and they fell silent as exhaustion set in. At last, however, the ground began to gently rise, becoming firmer and drier. Hal tried to coax Franc into conversation once more.

"What were my grandparents like?"

"Well, I never knew my father," Franc explained. "He died crossing these very same moors we are now on, one winter's night. He was in Dal Reniac when he received a message that my mother was giving birth. They warned him not to cross the moors alone at such a time of year, but by all accounts he was so eager to reach her that he decided to risk it anyway. They found him the next morning. His horse had taken a fall and broken its neck. He'd died of the cold."

She began to regret asking him anything, but Franc had now warmed to his theme. "So it was left to my mother to take care of the fort and to bring me up single-handedly. She missed him bitterly, but she did a sterling job, I can tell you. I'm sure she would never have allowed me to let you go. But she died before I even met Cara, more's the pity."

"What was she like?"

Franc's eyes hazed with nostalgia. "Oh, she was a survivor. And a fighter ─ she'd argue with anyone, man, woman or child in order to get her own way. I remember I had a few flaming rows with her myself as a young man. But she brought me up to understand my duty to Hannac and its people, and for that I loved her."

"What was her name?"

"Halanya. The spirits save me for my prescience. Look!"

Franc pointed ahead, and Hal strained her eyes to peer through the grainy light. A dim shape loomed through the mists and cloud. Far in the distance, the conical hill looked out of place against the backdrop of gently rolling moorland.

"Dal Reniac, Hal. Once the only rival to Colvé ‒ when it was in the hands of our ancestors."

As they continued further, she saw pale-coloured buildings of varying sizes and shapes clinging precariously to its side, and a formidable tower at the very peak. The light began to fade and low clouds enveloped the city once more. But now her heart seemed to pump with a different rhythm. Meracad was somewhere amongst that confusion of streets and buildings. She was going to find her.