Lineage

 

The Silt River was a churning artery of glacial runoff, cutting a jagged path through the limestone floor of the lower ravine. The water was a treacherous, opaque gray, concealing a shifting bed of loose gravel and deep, sucking mud. A heavy mist hung low over the surface, smelling of wet slate and ancient rot.

At the river’s edge, the chestnut mare hesitated, her nostrils flaring as she eyed the rushing current.

“Steady, girl,” Shierra murmured, leaning forward to press her palm against the mare's damp neck. Behind her, Dashiel let out a small, terrified squeak, his small arms tightening like iron bands around her waist. His remaining brass inkwells clattered violently against the cantle of the saddle.

“If we drown, Shierra, I want it noted in the archives that I strongly advocated for finding a bridge,” the gnome whispered, his teeth chattering against the freezing air.

“The mercenaries know where the bridges are, Dash. Hold your breath,” Shierra replied. She squeezed her calves, urging the mare into the river.

The moment the horse’s front hooves hit the gray water, the current slammed into them with numbing force. The riverbed was an unstable maze. Every step threatened to sink the mare’s legs into the shifting silt. Shierra closed her eyes for a split second, letting her mother’s lessons take over. She relaxed her thighs, dissolving the tension in her spine, and allowed her body to merge entirely with the mare’s desperate movements. As the mud shifted beneath the horse's left flank, Shierra fluidly shifted her weight to the right, counter-balancing the slip before the beast could panic. She guided the reins with light, spiritual touches, letting the animal find its own equilibrium through the deep current.

Right beside them, Morohtar navigated the torrent on the second frontier mount Reis had purchased-a stocky bay gelding.

Unlike the frantic chestnut mare, the bay moved with an uncanny, eerie calmness, entirely guided by the dark elf's absolute, pure-blooded elven balance. Morohtar used no heavy human tack to encumber the beast; he sat perfectly centered, his charcoal cloak rippling against the gray water, shifting his weight with a fluid grace that made horse and rider look like a single silhouette cutting through the foam. His silver eyes never left the rocky ridges above the opposite bank, tracking the perimeter with predatory focus even as the freezing spray washed over his stirrups.

Meanwhile, ten yards behind them, the water swirled up to the chest of the massive black destrier.

Sabre moved through the torrent like an imposing iron wedge, his immense mass anchoring him against the force of the river. Atop the stallion, Reis sat completely motionless, his eyes locked onto the dark treeline they had just abandoned. The freezing water soaked through his greaves and the hem of his tattered white cloak, but the knight didn't seem to feel the cold. The two made the river crossing look effortless.

His bastard sword remained strictly sheathed. After Morohtar’s examination of the steel, Reis knew that exposing the thermally shocked metal to the freezing river water would likely cause the microscopic fractures to split further. He kept his left hand resting lightly on the leather wrap of the hilt, his palm naturally cupping the heavy disk of the pommel, maintaining the half-inch downward calibration the dark elf had drilled into him.

The bay gelding scaled the muddy southern incline first, Morohtar dismounting before the horse had even fully halted. Shierra guided the chestnut mare up right after him.

“Praise the Weave. My ink is dry, and my spine is still in one piece.” Dashiel exclaimed.

“The hounds won't cross this,” Morohtar’s deadpan rasp carried over the roar of the water as he checked the bay’s flanks.

“The silt completely masks the dregs of your alchemical trail, Gnome.”

Reis urged Sabre up the steep bank, the destrier powerful enough to scale the mud without a single stumble. The knight dismounted, his heavy boots crushing the sodden earth as he looked up at the dark sky. The trek through the wild had drained them, and the damp cold was beginning to settle deep into their bones. They had spent fourteen grueling hours in the wild, using nothing but the dense, honey-glazed Vangian waybread to keep the marrow in their bones from freezing solid.

He turned back to the exhausted party, his gravelly bass low but authoritative.

“We stop here,” Reis commanded, unbuckling Sabre's wet saddlebags. “Get a fire rolling, but not too big.”

The knight moved beside Shierra’s horse, and offered a hand to assist her dismount. She took his hand for leverage and dismounted, then Reis hoisted a grinning Dashiel down. However, the gnome practically tumbled off the back of the horse, collapsing onto the wet grass and unclenching his white-knuckled fists. He merrily jogged to Morohtar who was guiding his horse to be tied.

“Excellent work, Shierra.” Reis said, placing his gauntleted hand on her good shoulder. She smiled and nodded, though her relief was definitely greater.

* * * *

Breakfast was a luxury the party could not afford to grow accustomed to.

The next morning, the mountain air was exceptionally crisp, saturated with the sharp scent of damp pine needles and the smoky residue of their tiny, well-managed campfire. Dashiel balanced his parchment on a relatively flat slab of shale, carefully steadying it while working with a wood-bound graphite stick.

To the gnome's immediate left, a highly entertaining display of physical and psychological warfare was underway. The knight and the rogue were executing their morning training rotation. The solemn giant had seemingly warmed up to the dark elf slightly - or, at the very least, he had concluded that regular physical exertion was required to prevent his joints from seizing up beneath his tattered white cloak.

It was a thoroughly mismatched endeavour. Reis operated under a flawless, rigid honour code, moving in precise, predictable lines of absolute knightly discipline. Morohtar, naturally, took monstrous advantage of the restrictions. The rogue danced just outside the reach of the knight's wooden practice blade, ducking low to throw playful, lightning-fast punches straight at the gaps in the heavy armour, deliberately tapping Reis on the chin just to disrupt his rigid composure.

Reis shot the dark elf a glare that could shatter granite, his neck flushing pink beneath his beard, but he maintained his stance. Dashiel could only shake his head. Watching a master assassin treat a decorated Knight of the White City like a lumbering training dummy was a severe misuse of tactical assets, but it did wonders for camp morale.

As the rogue slipped past another one of Reis’s heavy overhead swings, Shierra leaned closer to the gnome’s fallen log. Her voice dropped into a quiet, intense whisper to avoid being heard over the clattering of the wooden swords.

“Dash,” she murmured, her half-elven eyes narrowing as she tracked the knight's movements.

“Confirm something for me. Our knight protector... what did you say his family name was again? Alderron?”

“Correct, my girl,” Dashiel replied, finally looking up from his parchment. “Reis Alderron. An uncommonly heavy name for an uncommonly heavy man.”

“And what exactly do your archives know about House Alderron?” she pressed, her brow furrowing with the fierce, stubborn curiosity that had been consuming her ever since the farmstead transaction. “Who are they?”

Dashiel set his graphite stick down, his gnomish instincts instantly firing at the prospect of a genealogical puzzle.

“A fair question. Let us consult the data.”

The gnome unbuckled his secondary leather canvas pack, diving arm-deep into the chaotic interior. Shierra watched patiently while the gnome digs through the pack, whilst talking to himself.

Rummage... No, that is a half-eaten stick of dried venison jerky from last autumn.

Rummage... No, that is a forbidden scroll of localized combustion vectors that I really shouldn't be carrying near open flame.

Rummage... Ah. Here it is.

Dashiel blew a heavy layer of limestone dust off the cover, revealing the title The Register of Peerage and Noble Houses of Thorreon, authored by Arch-Lector Thaddeus in the Third Age.

Opening the heavy book, Dashiel turned to the index at the back. He traced a small, gray-stained finger down the column under the letter 'A', his voice dropping to a low mutter as he scanned the listings aloud.

“Alden... the southern vineyard barons, yes... Aldrich... the ironmonger lords of the west rings... Alton... the silk-trade sovereigns...”

The gnome's finger paused, sliding down to the next lettered block, then back up again. His brow furrowed.

“Perplexing,” he muttered, tapping his chin with the blunt end of his graphite stick.

“Alderron is entirely absent from the registry. There are some truly magnificent names recorded here, Shierra, but Alderron is categorically not in the list.”

Shierra leaned in further, her dark eyes darting between the empty space on the vellum page and the giant knight across the clearing.

“Don't you find that a bit... contradictory, Dashiel? We saw the coin he left for that farmer. The man has serious wealth - enough to throw gold around for two fully-equipped riding horses without a second thought. If he has that kind of coin, shouldn't he be coming from a great house? One with a seat in the capital?”

“One would logically deduce so,” Dashiel pondered, shutting the heavy ledger with a satisfying thud.

“Unless... we are looking in the wrong tier of the hierarchy. Is it possible he hails from one of the lesser, unmapped frontier houses? A minor estate buried so deep in the borderlands that the capital cartographers never favoured the bloodline with a visit? Or perhaps... a name assumed to bury a past he has no desire to catalogue?”

Shierra didn't answer. She simply watched Reis as he finally caught Morohtar's wrist in a vise-like iron grip, ending the sparring session with a gruff, exhausted growl. Her expression remained a volatile mix of intense curiosity and quiet fascination.

The mystery of the knight's coin and lineage deepened. Dashiel resolved to let the question marinate for now. Once the party successfully breached the Sovereign Gates and found refuge within the Grand Library of Nadaran, he would execute a far more invasive research protocol into the minor regional genealogies.

There was a hidden architecture to Lord Reis's history, and as a scribe of the realm, the gnome refused to leave a blank page.