The air chilled slightly just before dawn and a scrim of mist swirled over the fetlocks of the antelope as they moved toward the edge of the forest. Dawn’s first rays had turned the air a pale eldritch green, a strange otherworldly twilight that insisted upon silence and got it.
Theo rode beside Riddick and Shazza, the rest of the riders strung out in a line along the forest wall until they disappeared into the mist. There were a lot more than the original twenty that had accompanied Underhill’s men. This was an army or as much of an army as could be raised in a place like this.
Riddick knew that wasn’t entirely true, however. He had seen the Moorglade and knew what she could do. This place had technology but it ran on something else, it fought for something else. He looked to the men beside him and noticed that many were armed with the elegant crossbows, many more had swords. He could feel Shazza fidget in front of him as she readied her own weapon, the firearm strange against the other more elegant weapons, almost an affront. It didn’t matter to him; if it was effective, he would use whatever he had at hand but he noticed anyway.
The trees thinned as the forest became another grassland and, as one, the antelope stepped out into the open. All of Riddick’s fine hairs stood up at the sight before him and he could feel Shazza’s skin turn to gooseflesh despite the heat of his hands on her hips. One sidelong look at Theo was enough to know that it was the same for him. Theo looked dumbstruck on the back of the antelope, his mouth open slightly as he took in the sight.
Heavy mist swirled over the ground, out far across the field. Riddick shifted uneasily at the sight of the sea beyond; if anything, the image hit him harder in reality than it had in his dream. It went on forever and was exactly as he had seen it. Shazza felt him shudder behind her and turned in the saddle to look at him. Of all the things he had seen in his life, it was this that unnerved him. This serenity that stretched as far as the eye could see.
In his dream he had known that this was all his, but it was one thing to dream it and another to know it, when you saw it. It was his, as Shazza was his, as Jack was his.
Shazza reached around and her fingertips brushed over the spot on his chest where she had touched him before, on the deck of the Moorglade after the Company ship had been brought down. The handprint didn’t glow blue anymore but his skin still tingled when she touched him there. That was another dream that he had about this place. Between the faint whisper of electricity and the sight of the dream sea before him, the truth solidified. A belief in fate wasn’t something he could have afforded before; life was cruel, and the only thing that could be counted on was more cruelty. Until now.
“Sunhillow.” The single word, quiet as a breath, slipped from Theo’s lips as he looked past the field. It must have been awe-inspiring when it was whole. Even now, delicate barren ribs soared up into the sky, so much a part of the ground around them that it didn’t stand apart as something that didn’t belong. The long causeway that Riddick had seen in his dream swirled with mist again and was obscured. “I never imagined it could be real.” Riddick had no answer for that; he hadn’t believed any of it, a place like this, could be real in the first place. It seemed foolish to deny the reality that was so clear.
The scouts moved ahead in the grass, with the powerful, dun colored dogs at their heels, to search for a sign of the Company men that had been driven out of the forest. It was nearly impossible to see anything in the shifting shroud of mist.
The first rays of sun glinted off the water, pinpricks of light that glittered towards the horizon. The mist remained thick at the edge of the forest, protected in the shade, but farther out in the field the rays tore and shredded at the low-lying fog.
Riddick spotted the Company men at almost the same time the scouts did. There were a scattered handful, halfway between the forest and the long, partially broken causeway that led to the ruins. They had used the cover of the fog to hide their passing but dawn swept that cover away.
There were four, slightly ahead of about a dozen others and, by the looks of them, they had run through the night. At least. Even at this distance, Riddick could tell that they were dirty and run to the point of exhaustion. It was an odd position to be in. He had been down there where they were, run to ground.
Before he could think about the similarities for much longer, David Underhill’s bull antelope nosed out ahead of the others that lined the forest walls. Black as night, drops of dew like jewels across the beast’s dark coat, the beast lowered its head and snorted a plume of mist of its own. As it raised its head again, it bellowed, a deep mournful sound that echoed across the field. Unbidden by their riders, other antelope stepped forward and repeated the call until the air was full of the sound.
“Easy.” Riddick soothed his hands over Shazza’s thighs; the sound had spooked her. It was a terrifying, final sound. Even Theo looked a little spooked. It didn’t affect anyone else however and Riddick concluded it was a normal enough occurrence.
Riddick looked out towards the Company men, to gauge their reaction. It was about what he had expected. At first they stood frozen against the backdrop of the ruins and the sea, then the four in front turned as one and bolted for the causeway, followed by the others.
Still the antelope didn’t move and both Riddick and Theo fidgeted restlessly as they wondered why they remained by the forest.
Theo turned away from Riddick when he was poked from the opposite side. Young Jacob Underhill had pulled up beside him and handed him a package the length of a spear wrapped in a dark green oilcloth. Puzzled, Theo stared at the young boy, who simply motioned with his head towards Riddick. “It’s a gift, from ‘Mother‘. She wanted you to have this.”
Jacob didn’t elaborate further, just pulled his beast back into line beside his father. Riddick quickly took the long package from Theo and glanced up again at the Company men out in the field. They still had a ways to run but nobody moved, they waited for him.
Quickly, he untied the straps that held the package together, unfurling it. The air stilled even more. It was a spear, and it was a banner. The fabric was the same pale grey green that made up the sails of the Moorglade and made a long trail as it fluttered behind him on the ground. In the center of the banner, stitched in iridescent thread, was a stylized depiction of the Moorglade herself. Shazza and Theo both gasped, but Riddick couldn’t make a sound.
All of this waiting was for him. The Rider. He wasn’t just a guy that pulled a ship; it was a hell of a lot more than that. The people that lived here on Trieste had this whole history of war and resistance that went back a thousand years or more. Their king, Olias, was gone, and had been for hundreds of years. Sunhillow lay in ruins before them. There was the Moorglade. And there was him, the Rider. They looked to him to lead, because he was meant to.
Riddick held the warm wood of the spear in his hands, the banner left to drift off behind him. He was an orphan, a convict since the age of thirteen. He had never had anything of his own before. He had nothing but himself, until now.
Shazza reached back to run a hand over his thigh, to soothe him as he had done with her earlier when she had gotten spooked. Riddick leaned into her a little and looked over at Theo who simply nodded solemnly at him. He was the Rider. All of this was his, and it waited for him now.
“Ready for this?” Riddick whispered into Shazza’s ear. He waited until she nodded and whispered again. “Take us out ahead of the others.”
Shazza nudged the antelope out slightly ahead of the others. Theo came out with them which didn’t surprise Riddick at all; it secretly pleased him. This was Theo’s dream as well. Riddick had remembered some of the speeches that the Company men had given before a hunt. Riddick didn’t waste the time, it wasn’t what he was.
Leaning forward into Shazza once more, he whispered to her. “Think you can get this thing to bellow like that again?” Shazza didn’t answer, just leaned forward, to push the beast’s head down again. She didn’t expect to be able to move it, only somehow let it know what she wanted. The beast dropped its head easily enough, only to raise it again and let out another loud soulful bellow, which was answered down the line by the other bulls.
Riddick raised the spear with its banner high into the air, and then as one they were off. In the forest, the beasts had moved silently as they padded through the cushioned duff of the forest floor. Here, on the hard packed earth, their hooves shook the earth in a deafening roar. They moved a lot faster than he would have expected and his breath sucked in as he hung onto Shazza. Riddick closed his eyes for a heartbeat as the beasts ate up the ground between the Company men and the forest, as he remembered the sound.
Riddick had run until the muscles in his legs burned, until he thought his chest would explode. He remembered the sound of the horses behind him as they hunted him in the dark, the way their hooves pounded against the earth. He remembered the shouts of the Rangers and the earth that kicked up around him in puffs as they fired at him. He had to reach the fence and once he did he would be free.
Most of all he remembered the fear. Not fear of being hurt, or being shot. Not fear of the dogs or of being trampled. What he feared was being sent back to Slam. He had another week in his stint with the Rangers and then they were going to send him back. That’s what drove him forward. To be free, to finally be free.
He knew a little of what the Company men ahead ran for but they were on the wrong side of this battle. They didn’t run for the same reasons that made him run, they didn’t run to be free, only to escape. To a lot of people that might not have made a difference. Once, it wouldn’t have made a difference to Riddick either. Before he had something to fight for. Freedom had a new definition for him in this place. Freedom wasn’t running, freedom was not having to run.
The stragglers were cut down quickly, easily, first by arrow, and then by sword as the antelope ran overtop of them. Shazza held the reins of the beast in one hand and fired with the other, to take down a couple of the Company men, as had Theo.
Now it was the four in the lead that they had to contend with; they had already scrambled over the broken start of the causeway and ran flat out along it. It would be a close race to see who would reach the relative safety of the ruins first but if the four remaining Company men reached what was left of the keep, they could conceivably defend it. The only way to reach them would be across the narrow causeway with the sea falling away far below to either side.
The ground broke into boulders and loose sand as they neared the beach and the antelope could no longer run full out. They picked their way across the broken part of the causeway but they would never reach the Company men in time.
Riddick pressed the spear into Shazza’s hand, and fiercely kissed the nape of her neck before he swung down from the beast’s back to join the scouts. He was gone before Shazza could say a word. She looked over to Theo for help only to realize that Theo had joined Riddick and now the two men ran flat out across the stones with the rest of the scouts.
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