755 CC Apr 3rd

Two dozen men buried today. The troll killed two dozen of them. I ran out of holy oil during the ceremony. I made a fool of myself in my disbelief. We had always used a simple vial to carry the oil for burial ceremony and I even refilled it that morning and I ran out. I wasn’t wasteful with the tincture but on the twentieth corpse I realized I had run out. The whole thing. What a fool I was, but I have never seen so many die in one day.

I ran back to the storeroom, learning the hard way that Brother Brenin had fled with a satchel of goods for the road. There, I refilled the holy oil but by the time I had returned the soldiers had already stitched up the bags. I watched them threading the needle through the last man’s nose as I came upon the great grave. I drizzled some on and mumbled the prayer. I don’t think any of them listened to me.

A troll surprising them one night could be understood, but the second night they had been looking for it. The creature had slipped around them completely. They thought it would come from the marsh, the woods, the wilds of nature. The damnable monster waltzed right down the road, hard packed by wagon and hoof. By the light, you would think such a large creature would be noisy! When it walked at leisure it was like a phantasm. Feet like tree trunks glided across the ground and only made the noise of squelching mud here and there. One of the survivors said he didn’t even realize it was there until the antlers reached across the night sky above him, like dark fingers. He only survived because it grabbed the man next to him.

Of course, when it fought we heard it. The stamping and leaping like a battering ram beat against the earth. The screams torn from the lips of dying men. Panic and death, one after another. It was like the presence of the creature blotted out the light. Even when torches and lanterns were brought, all that could be seen was darkness. Like ink upon the night it danced between them as a shadow that left corpses in its wake.

It was like the raven.

I cannot fight. I had no business going there. I can’t be blamed for watching from afar with all that I was armed with was a candle and my nightclothes. But it was because of that I saw the raven.

Perched upon the branches of a barren oak, the bird of night watched. Still as a statue and fit for a gargoyle’s fright. Without a touch of breath or a twitch of feather it watched the clash of steel and flesh-leather. More than a shadow, the gloss of wings gleamed with starlight, coating itself in heavenly radiance. Bereft of movement and yet brimming with the light of life–more than any animal had the right.

I knew as soon as I saw it, that godly gift to the mortal realm. Awe struck me to my knees for an angel of death was before me. I choked back my wailing cry and buried my face as tears made my face less dry. I am nothing but a commoner thrust to priestly power, I keep vigil to a dead angel of a dead god whose protection has long since ended. I knew not what prayers I could offer the reaper of the final shepherd.

The cries of death left it unmoved.

***

I couldn’t bring myself to speak beyond the burial process, and I was not alone in that. Many of the soldiers were too morose to part their lips for more than food and wine. They toiled with the soil, ripping out stone and stump to make the room to lay down their brothers to rest.

Expecting them to ride out in force, to take the path of war back to the grendel’s lair, I retired to the library. I didn’t want to face anyone, not the Vassish nor even my brothers. The solace of papyrus was what I sought. At first, I thought it might do my mind good to toil through the process of duplication, to transfer some of the old texts to fresher stock. Before I had even picked out a proper manuscript from between the tomes of vellum, I happened upon a gap in the shelf, a void in the dust.

I was not alone in the library.

The prince was there and he was the one with my missing book. My missing book. Just listen to me. Father Marcuese was our self-appointed librarian for lack of a dedicated one and I suppose it has simply fallen to me. I’m afraid more and more is going to fall to me. At least three of the acolytes have already left and I don’t blame them.

My greatest surprise, more than him being in the library rather than marauding with his soldiers, was that he had an actual text before him. No pictures to excite the youth’s mind. He had our copy of Legends of the North by Sean Cainwicks. The script was old, the spelling antiquated, and worst of all written in traditional calligraphy instead of simplified cursive. At the time, I could only guess what he was reading.

“The responsibilities of a king seem to transcend the realms. Funny, isn’t that?” he asked, using the most eloquent pronunciation of the common tongue. The entire duration of his stay, he had been steadfastly using his native Vassish tongue such that it never even occurred to me that his mother hailed from Westshire. Of course he could speak her language.

My shock aside, I responded as befit my station. The old adage that protected the abbey for centuries. “I’m afraid that my expertise ends with theology, good sir. I would never think to tell a king or prince how to behave.” I very much wanted to tell him to get lost of course.

“There’s some kind of universal sense of dignity. The head of state is the embodiment of the state. I may not be the king yet, but I am not so different as the prince. I think it comes down to instinctual trust.” He trailed off at that and shoved the book across the desk so that he might stand up, fold his hands behind his back, and gaze out the warped glass window. “It’s a form of social contract I think. Are you familiar with the concept?”

I said I was familiar with the concept, as a polite man would. The prince was evidently about to expound on it whether I had ever talked with one of those demagogues or not.

“In the heat of battle, much is stripped away from a man. He has to remind himself of duty and obligation which implies such things are not in his essence but forced upon him.”

“Some men accept duty. I would hardly say the gods forced us to be the way that we are.”

“I wonder about that. Sapphira appointed our royal line, and her angel Acheliah has given judgment through perhaps a dozen crises of succession. But the central kingdoms created themselves. Helios didn’t single anyone out and put them in charge. He didn’t tell you people to follow and yet you do. Your governments are hardly different from those created by the gods.”

“Imitation. We too have received guidance from the emissaries.”

The prince shook his head. “I think what happened is that Sapphira and the other gods told us to use governments that self-evidently worked. It’s not that they work because of divine intervention. There is a back and forth between king and subject. Each has a role to fulfill and so long as the other holds up their end of the bargain they are satisfied. A social contract of sorts, don’t you see? A man alone in the woods has no need for rules of behavior. Only a man among other men does. You put him in a nightmare, a frantic and bloody melee where his friends are being crushed by a monster… Priest, I saw my men, who I thought loyal, turn their back and flee while others were killed; and I don’t blame them.”

“That sounds reasonable to my judgment.”

He spun on me, his eyes sharp as flint. “But why? Why do we think such cowardice is permissible? Is it not because I, their prince whom they owe loyalty to, had nothing in my power to protect them with? Because I could not protect them that rendered their loyalty moot? It is a breakdown of the intangible network of concessions between men that creates the web we call society.”

I confessed that I couldn’t tell if he was appealing to history or siding with the reactionaries anymore. I was not the most equipped to grapple with such ideas and yet he went on. He treated me like one might speak to a cat when complaining about the issues of their day. Dutifully, I kept my mouth shut as much as I could and, like a duelist, waited for my opportunity to deliver a verbal coup de tat. If such a moment occurred, I sadly missed it.

His speech went on, for my ears alone and now the eyes of any who reads this journal of mine. “If I am to be a rightful prince of the land, and later the king should the gods will it, I must uphold the social contract as we have composed it, especially in a moment of crisis. As such, I must destroy this monster, permanently escape from it or resign my position.”

For days now I have watched these Vassish soldiers tromp through the woods and do nothing more than get lost and confused. They lose the trail every time they reach the marsh. They have made fools of themselves by day and corpses by night. It showed some wisdom to look to the learnings of the past for how to deal with the troll, but when I studied the book myself it seemed there was very little to learn. Westshire was never much troubled by trolls.

My clumsy tongue, bereft of the gift for diplomacy, proposed to the prince that if he thought so strongly about his duties and obligations, that he should do whatever he could to learn how to act rightly. I told him he should speak with the northman, Leomund Tolzi.

Perhaps I shouldn't have.