Picking Up the Pieces

[Malaroth]

The grim Grand Master knight stood with arms crossed as he watched the procession parade its way towards the remnants of the Chapterhouse. Armed with saws and hammers, tents and nails, the winding column of workers, flanked by armed squires and mounted knights, moved along with the same grim, collective countenance as their leader. Horses and men caused thunderous footsteps to echo for great distance across Myrken's heart, dust from the road spilling into the spring air, and most silent with brutal memory at the horror visited upon the order still not long ago.

They remembered the magical fist of smoke and fury, the Ashfiend's terrible voice and burning eyes, the surging mass of the undead, and the terrible burning the Scourge of Myrken had brought with him. It had not been an attack so much as a purge, a strike for one of Myrken's defenders, to weaken her for the battle that had ultimately removed his threat from the land.

His threat, most assuredly; but not his shadow, nor his memory.

Filled with his own memories, Malaroth hitched his jaw thoughtfully aside as he watched the head of the column work its way past where the gates once stood. Constructing the inner reaches of the keep out of wood had been a temporary solution meant to be changed over the course of time. Time had a way of making sure things worked out as it had planned, however. Replacing the construction with stonework would happen sooner, and under different circumstances, then Malaroth had originally planned.

The knighthood had suffered not only loss of headquarters and morale, but significant loss of life. Taken unawares, and by such a swift and brutal assault, they had stood little chance matching strength with the Ashfiend. In the aftermath, however rare an enemy the Ashfiend might prove to be, the Grand Master noted that there would be a need for more than mere strength of arms to defend His Majesty's lands and to see its citizens kept safe in a wild and supernaturally untamed place. To that end he had already remodeled the knighthood to train its members in the knowledge and use of sorcery as well as swordplay.

He required men and women to take up the Shepherds' banner and crook.

He required time to train them all and see the Chapterhouse restored.

He could make distinct use of the political appointment he yet waited upon, and had for some time. Given the recent crisises he understood the delay, but there had been enough time spent waiting. He did not have magics to raise battlements overnight, the support of being found popular or even likable by most of the Myrken figureheads, nor even the morale granted to one defending his home for he was not native-born.

But he had determination, he told himself. He had ability, leadership, and hope.

He also had friends of his own.

[Reinstadler]

Though it may seem otherwise, one of the newest arrivals to Myrken Wood has not been idle. There is so much to get acclimated to in this strange, backwards place. One needed to understand all of it in order to thrive as Reinstadler intended to.

It was strange how some things here did not develop as they should. It was strange how some were neglected. It was time, perhaps, to further one's connections.

Sir Malaroth Deucalios,

If you do not know of me, my name is Graf Josef Reinstadler, a recently arrived emissary of the throne. As such, I have found little to give me heart here in Myrken. It is a land full of troubles, high and low both. However, I have been greatly heartened in seeing His Majesty's one-time investment pay off in so spectacular a way. Myrken has been well-served by your order and news of your personal valor has reached my ears.

It is therefore my hope that we might meet and speak of many things pertaining to the future of this land.

Graf Josef Reinstadler

[Malaroth]

Graf Josef Reinstadler
Royal Emissary to His Majesty

Greetings,

Permit me to welcome you to Myrken Wood, which I have come to call my home. It is, indeed, a dark and grim land that is likely to crush the hope of many, and I understand any feelings of frustration or despair you might have that anything notable might be achieved in a place that so often seems little more than a colossal wreck. Its people are industrious and stubborn, however, having survived many major calamities. It lends them a certain, strong survival streak if a hard distrust of foreigners and the Crown.

I am glad to hear that you are pleased with how the order has progressed, even in light of certain calamities. Still, I am determined to see the Chapter House reconstructed better than before along with implementing certain other ideas that would prove to be to the benefit of both His Majesty's interests and the safety of the citizenry.

I would be honored to meet you at your earliest convenience. My duties lately are mostly the oversight of various rebuilding projects for the knighthood, leaving me with a flexible schedule. Please let me know where and when would be a good time to meet face to face.

Respectfully,

Sir Malaroth Deucalios
Grand Master of the Shepherd Knights

[Malaroth]

There were other letters being sent forth. Many letters, and a great majority of them bound for the capital and, ultimately, the king's hands. Requests and reports, certainly, and secretive plans for secretive men, all secured by the Grand Master's personal seal and guarded by a handful of knights and squires, armored and armed, upon barded horses. Surely it was no secret that whatever they transported was reckoned of great value, nor was it terrible secretive at all, in some respect, if only due to the heavily prepared escort with which each message crossed to the hands of those who were also loyal to the king upon crossing Myrken's borders.

Also, great quantities of earth had begun to be excavated even as the remnants of the towering wooden walls were being torn down altogether. They were torn down slowly, however, and in their place enormous amounts of displaced soil were being heaped, creating a sharp slope upon which the new walls would be constructed once it had all been packed down.

Whatever was being built was certainly niether aadvertised nor even spoken of, save that a great many men were seen carrying nothing but shovels and stones into the ruins of the Chapter House. A great deal of coin was also invested to keep their mouths shut.

[Malaroth]

The digging had taken on a renewed vigor, super-charged with additional coin given from the Grand Master's hands and supplied by His Majesty's grant. Recent events had decided for him, it seemed, inasmuch as the chambers beneath the new Chapter House would prove to be quite necessary.

Beyond what would be the new curtain wall, more laborers broke their backs in repairing and readying the buildings used to house the Derry refugees fleeing from Duke Burel's treacherous war. With Myrkenfolk troubled with threats of demonic forces, and given the nature of Myrken Wood in general, he had given his mind reign to discover what else might be done for the sake of the people.

Soon, it would serve as a place for people to seek sanctuary from the evils that plagued Myrken Wood and find protection from an often hostile land. Most of the rubble had finally been cleared, and leaving some of what had still stood, the land stood ready for the shipments of stone to arrive and begin to be laid into the ground.

Soon the real work would begin.

[Malaroth]

Things had progressed.

The din of construction began just before dawn and continued until just after dusk. It began with the rumble of laborers trudging back into the field and soon thereafter devolved into the chiming of hammers, axes, saws and rolling stones. The creaks of simple cranes struggled against their burdens while foremen barked orders over the heated din. Rain and wind did little to slow them.

Past the vigorous sounds of the resurrecting knighthood stood wooden spikes connected with lengths of white twine and thread, marking off the dimensions of the outer curtain wall where stones had not yet begun to be laid. Beyond these were scattered further posts and thread amidst the buildings which had survived the Ashfiend's assault.

Further still the stonework was being laid for the new keep, atop a series of basements and sub-basements, connected intricately with winding tunnels and narrow stairwells hewn into the earth. Great mounds of dirt steadily crept beyond where the curtain wall would stand, serving to make it even taller.

It was to such sights and sounds that the first of the reinforcements arrived in Myrken Wood, not all that far from the monastery at the land's troubled heart.

[Malaroth]

Among those reinforcements were knights whose feet had not tread Myrken soil in some time. Not foreigners by any stretch of the word, many native-born to the surrounding lands, if not to Myrken Wood itself. Among them were not a few traces of Derry accents, the harsh consonants of New Dauntless, and others who had travelled homeward for the order that had been founded amongst native soil.

Word had reached Graf Reinstadler in the distant capital of the grand master's prowess in the final battle upon the Ashfiend, and evidently it had reached others as well. Now gossip and rumor had spread amongst the distant court, to a small but significant degree, of a functioning knighthood as in the olden days, with knights, loyal steeds, and sharpened lances and swords. These were not the castoffs nor petty nobility seeking to summer their stay away while being fashionable if peldged to something identified only as "quaint." These were returning natives, proud of their heritage, excited for the order that serviced their homelands, and glad to join.

They were only the first of the reinforcements to be sure, but it was a good first step to take. With their coming, as many stayed briefly at local inns and taverns, they encouraged those who had never left to join the order as well. Not only was it a chance to protect one's home, but also for title and possibly land, however distant, in the future. All of these things bound up in a code above and beyond themselves, a fixed point of morality and true nobility.

Each arriving knight and squire pledging themselves to the order, along with those who came to serve in non-military measure, earned a warm smile and firm handshake from the Grand Master himself, along with his thanks for their willingness to serve and steward Myrken Wood into a better future built upon the courage, and ashes, of those who had gone before.

[Malaroth]

One pin clattered noisily to the battered tray that rested on a squat table. Sunlight filtered through the clouds stretched thinly across the sky, catching the tray and lacing its folds and edges with harsh, burning lines. They caught the length of the pain, its tip and head marred with old blood. They bore witness to the figure in the high-backed chair beside the table, the length of his gray-streaked blond hair spilling about haggard and angled features, taut with memory and hard learning garnered over the past several months.

Another pin joined the first, jarring the former, jumping from tip to head, and back again, before beginning to settle. The skilled hands of the surgeon began work on a third, freeing it from a fleshy prison; the former bards of a cell, the walls of which had been the Grand Master knight's own lips. Between each pin a length of black thread, worn and frayed, to mark certain boundaries for the silent commander.

Metal freed from flesh, metal upon metal, ragged gasps for air from a surgeon attempting to keep his hands steady. For his part Malaroth remained silent and still, feeling the tugging and stretching of his scarred lips, recalling the blood that had been shed within the knighthood's walls over the past few months. Violent oaths and sharpened steel had their way with one another, given shape and form in the duels between knights, superiors and inferiors. Their conflict had been hidden away behind a sudden curtain of silence with the world, beyond and within the confines of a fortress under construction.

The grinding of pulleys and the shouts of laboring men had drown out the private war waged in shadows and secrets, culminating in blood and death. Another pin settled upon the tray, another steadying breath, another vision came to Malaroth's mind concerning the order's future, and the future of Myrken Wood. Silence in the land without had wrought silence upon the land within. It was the silence before an axe fall, before a sprung ambush, before a deadly plunge over a looming cliff.

It was a silence wrought in silence, that hopefully none would ever know.

[Malaroth]

Another pin that he had forced through his lips, binding his lips shut for months on end with needle and thread, found its way to the waiting tray. The surgeon mumbled his disagreement with the knight's self-abuse, and shook his head at the muttered response of there being a need for such things. It served as a symbol, as did so many things within the order, of that which had been turned to destructive purposes.

It spoke of the politics, the back-biting, the back-stabbing that had nearly ended several of their number. All in the name of one man's vision, one man's greed, one's man plans. Plans for re-ordering, re-structuring, re-doing things now that the threat of the Fiend had been ended. Plans to compromise the knighthood and its founding sentiments and ethos.

For this treachery, the conspirators' heads now rested from lofty perches atop spear-blades erected, in turn, upon the emerging castle's ramparts. The Grand Master's hands till ached where the lead conspirator had struck him the night before last with the flat of a blade. A black welt bore the memory for him, in aching flesh and wounded honor. Even when there was peace for Myrken there would be none in the order. Where, he mused, had human nature gone wrong?

Another tug, another pin taken from lips that twitched and bent with the surgeon's precise jerks and tugs. Another thought bleeding outward, beyond the order's grounds, for the future, for some cause worthy of the knighthood's time, for some measure of deed left to be done.

"Prepare my horse," he murmured to the servant who watched, pale, at the ongoing procedure.