Wrenogal: Act II, lxxx-lxxxiv
lxxx
A thousand thoughts now thicketed his mind,
though lurid was his visage. Even though
his first mark, truer, now he needn’t find,
his true mark, foremost, he would choose to go.
You’ll lose your name if you now go for this,
the Shroud said, knowing how it would be heard.
I cannot guarantee you will not miss,
if you go back on your official word.
But Erison had no ears left for talk.
His monologue retreated inward, mute,
he had so long been predator, the stalk
of kings, but now he was his own recruit.
I’ll play the game I’ve played, and when I’m close,
I’ll take their necks together, and, both, gross.
lxxxi
“What ho!” He called, embracing character,
ignoring the reactions of the rest.
He knew hostility as an actor
who acted late at surprise’s behest.
“I know you must be fearful I am here,
I know this is a secret that I’ve found.
But though a villain I know I appear,”
he dropped his greatsword on the dewy ground.
“I overheard that there was work to do.
I used to be a soldier, hence the sword.
But let me help, I know what caused all you
to hide like this. My silence is my word.
That woman who you work for—she might save
my sickly mother from an early grave.”
lxxxii
The Wren had been deceived like this before.
By one who claimed a sickly father, too,
but killed the very man his lying wore,
and false ethos forced pathos that was true.
This one–another one who wished him well,
who came, even as Nolda, from the dark,
but whose arrangement spun as does a spell
that none can falsify who wait and hark.
Though truth was less the issue, and, again,
the ethos crushed, with logos, this time, he
who had two choices: be the trusting Wren,
or be the one who kills what he can’t see.
“You’re bold enough to trust us. That will earn
at least one other bold, and trusting, turn.”
lxxxiii
The thicket in his mind now roared, its roots
now writhed in one great riveting concourse:
the traumas in his bones knew their pursuits,
his unhealed ecstasy now came in force.
“Then let me share my sword! I will defend
if ever there are foes that find you here!
Or, better yet, I’ll watch over your friend,
the woman that holds balm to all our fear!
But place me where your most dangerous roads
converge. I have such skill. I will not sleep
until the caravans return their loads,
the compensation that our efforts reap!”
His eyes flashed, at almost each other word,
reflecting, red, the hair he now could touch,
and such was his mind that he hadn’t heard
the warning of the Shroud he idly clutched:
Your avarice will be a plague to you.
You know not but what rests in your sinew.
lxxxiv
“There’s time enough for that tomorrow morn,”
said Nolda, peering into the red eyes.
“But load the rest of this,” and sudden scorn
flashed, even as Erison kept his guise.
Nolda could not make heads or tails of this,
his insight more than most, but lacking facts.
He knew enough to not let go amiss
his thoughts without some truth behind their backs.
And Erison replaced his scornful gaze
with one of pleasant eagerness again.
Which was not hard: an act of a few days
was quite alright with vengeance at their end.
That night, Nolda did as his mother said,
who’d taught to dye his hair red before bed.