Two Travelers Ascend
an adventure involving a sword, a vow, and fiery arrows
The Sword and the Path They Took
They’d heard the sword had powers when used with the Message of Love, but in all their years of travel, they’d yet to see it work wonders beyond what an ordinary sword might do.
It was sharp and well-balanced, with flourishes on the golden hilt and a leather grip that snugly fit the hand. The only unusual thing about the sword was the tiny cylindrical compartment in the hilt, wherein a tube, the Message of Love was hidden. This tube was accessed by pressing on the end of the pommel, which triggered the mechanism and popped the tube out. Aside from this, the sword was like any other sword passed down from one generation to the next.
The man carried it in his scabbard as he and his wife journeyed to the lost villages up in the mountains to bring them the Message of Love. But the man had used the sword as much as his wife had used her bow, which is to say, not much. They’d primarily used their weapons as housekeeping tools, not in defense against foes.
This was due in part to the pioneers who’d traveled this road before them and had made the way relatively safe by marking the path with painted red arrows on tree trunks. Others had put Xs on signs to mark misleading rabbit trails. Hunters had tracked down and killed most of the wild animals, while soldiers had rounded up as many of Chaos’ Minions as they could find. Someone had even built several lean-tos along the way where travelers might find respite during inclement weather.
Thus, while the man and his wife suffered insect bites and blisters, nothing life-threatening had hindered their progress towards the mountains and the lost villages beyond. Nothing, that is, until they came to the Cursed Cliffs.
How They Decided to Ascend
“I’ve seen three groups go up it so far,” said the husband to his wife, whose names were Todd and Mariel, respectively. They stood in the shade of the woods, a quarter mile or so from the base of the cliffs, where they each took turns squinting through an old spyglass. Some previous traveler had mounted the spyglass on a wooden post for this very reason.
From the safety of the trees, they could see the towering cliffs looming up towards the mountains beyond. Beneath the cliffs lay a field of scree and boulders, and at the top of the cliff was a wooden trellis supporting a rope and a basket.
“They take turns pulling each other up,” Todd declared. “I believe there’s some sort of pulley system at the top that makes this possible without much effort.”
“That must be so,” Mariel replied, taking another peek through the bronze spyglass after her husband. “I don’t see how else that scrawny man was able to pull up his rather large wife, nor how some of the wives, once they reached the top, are able to pull up their husbands.”
“Yes, well, if you line up enough pulleys one on top of the other, size and weight don’t matter much,” Todd explained.
Mariel smiled. “Well, this will be fun. We’ve never done something like this before. Shall we begin?”
“Yes, let’s,” Todd replied.
They thought they’d make it to the top before the sun set, and they might’ve, if Chaos’s Minions hadn’t caught wind of what the couple had just said.
Chaos’s Minions
As they wound their way through the scree and around the boulders on their way to what was known for some reason as the Cursed Cliffs, Todd and Mariel became aware of the presence of others, first to their left and then to their right. They believed them to be animals or birds or maybe even other travelers darting through the rocks not far off. But then they caught glimpses of their grim and greedy faces. And the sunlight glinted off their blades, some curved, some needle sharp. Then they no longer thought they were friendly.
They were, of course, Chaos’s Minions, who were known to appear when anyone was about to do something new or difficult. In the old tales, Chaos’s minions waited at river crossings or at the top of steep ascents to waylay weary, bedraggled, or sleepy travelers. They’d pounce on them, strip them of their goods, and drag them off to be Chaos’s slaves, or so the stories said.
The path up the mountain used to be crawling with them when the first pioneers came this way, but, as time went by and each new traveler made the road more and more traversable for those after them, Chaos’s Minions became the things of legends, not the day-to-day troubles met by ordinary men and women.
Now, the rivers had bridges, and the false paths had been labeled “Wrong Way.” Oil lanterns lit dark forests, and desert crossings were dotted with wells. Despite all this, Chaos’s Minions hadn’t entirely vanished. They were merely waiting for someone to try something uncomfortably new.
For perhaps the first time in weeks, the couple saw that their situation was becoming serious, and they began to wonder if they’d made a wrong turn.
What They Would Do Next
“Where did they come from?” Mariel asked.
“I don’t know,” Todd replied.
“They didn’t chase after the others who went up before us.”
“If they did, we didn’t see them,” Todd replied, quickening his pace and ensuring Mariel was keeping up. “You get in the basket first.”
“But there’s not enough time,” Mariel replied. “They’ll be here before you get me to the top, and how can you defend yourself?” She imagined Todd straining at the rope while a minion cut him down. He wouldn’t be able to let go of the rope to defend himself without plummeting Mariel to the ground, and if he didn’t defend himself, he’d be killed and Mariel would plummet to the ground anyway.
“You can pick them off with your arrows,” Todd said, but there was doubt in his voice. Her aim was decent, but was it good enough?
“What if I pull myself up so you’re free to fight?” she suggested. But the moment she said it, she wished she hadn’t. How selfish it sounded! Would she leave him to fight the minions alone?
“Yes,” he agreed. “You’re strong enough to lift yourself. You take the Message of Love to the lost villages. You must!”
This he said as they scrambled over the last stretch of loose rocks to where the basket and rope were tethered. Todd pressed the pommel of his sword, and the tiny tube containing the Message of Love popped out. He slipped this into Mariel’s pocket as she climbed into the basket. Then he untethered the rope, gathered up the slack, and shoved it all into the basket around her legs.
“Keep the rope inside,” he said. “Get the message to the villages. Go!”
“Why can’t you come too?” she asked desperately.
“There’s no room and no time!” he shouted. “Pull! They’re here!” And he wheeled to face his enemy, three filthy villains with matted hair and wild eyes. They smiled maliciously and then looked at one another, chuckling.
He drew his sword. Could he fight three at once? How long would he last? Would it be long enough for Mariel to get away? He doubted his skills. It’d been so long since he’d fought anyone, and he’d never fought three at once.
Having Second Thoughts
Mariel pulled. She pulled and pulled despite a lump in her throat and a lurch in her stomach. She gritted her teeth and determined not to cry. I must be strong, she thought. Every wife must be strong while she ascends the cliffs alone. They don’t burst into tears the moment they’re separated. But she couldn’t get rid of that awful feeling that she was doing something wrong.
How could she leave Todd to face the minions without her? How could he fight without the Message of Love in his sword? Wouldn’t its power be lost? Maybe the sword didn’t need the message. Maybe this was how the sword’s power actually worked, by sacrificing oneself to send the message on ahead.
She glanced down at Chaos’s Minions bearing down on Todd from three sides, laughing at him, toying with him, allowing him a chance to make the first move.
Then another thought occurred to her. How could she read the Message of Love to the lost villagers when she’d left her husband like this? How could she speak about love when she’d broken their vow to stay together? Wasn’t that what they’d promised the Oath Maker at the start of their journey—that old armored fellow with the bushy beard and intense eyes? How could she break that promise now? This was not in keeping with the message. No, the message was meaningless when not fitted to the sword. She couldn’t go.
So she stopped pulling and tied the rope off to a handle on the basket’s rim. She yanked her bow out of her quiver and notched an arrow on the string. Maybe she could stay in the basket and defend Todd at the same time. She’d not lifted herself very far, only about twenty feet or so.
She steadied herself as best she could, but this was nearly impossible with the wind pendulating the basket and the rope spinning her in slow circles. Her first and second shots were useless, but her third bounced off the rocks near a minion’s foot, causing him to jump back, grab a stone, and throw it up at her. He missed.
But then, her position became even more perilous.
The Minions See a Threat
A sharp pain in her ankle alerted her to another danger. An armored bowman was perched atop a boulder some distance from the action and was making a target of her, and not just any bowman but one with flaming arrows. Beside him sat a bucket of pitch and a flickering lamp, which he’d used to light a pitch-caked rag tied around an arrow. He’d fired this over the minions’ heads at Mariel.
The arrow had pierced through the willow stick basket and grazed the skin on her ankle. It was a minor injury, but the fire was a major threat. The dry smoldering sticks sent wisps of black smoke into her eyes and nose.
Blinking back the tears that came freely now, she stomped on the arrow until she’d forced it out of the basket. However, in doing this, she’d poked a hole through the sticks and fanned the smoke into flame. One long, fiery tongue burst up from the floor of the basket. She leapt, but she had nowhere to go.
Then a second flaming arrow thwapped into the basket’s side.
She’d be burned alive if she stayed here! What else could she do but untie the rope and lower herself back to the ground? With much coughing and fumbling and smarting eyes, she untied the rope. But in that time, the flames began to scorch her. Desperately, she let the rope slide through her hands, burning her palms even more severely than her legs in the time it took the basket to crash to the ground.
Mariel leapt from the blaze, kicking in the dust to cool her legs, and as she did, the tiny tube containing the Message of Love slipped from her pocket and bounced across the rocks. The clink-clink of the metal tube, insignificant as it was, drew the minions’ attention. They withdrew from their scrimmage with Todd to watch Mariel scramble after the tube.
Her hands were bloody, her ankle grazed, and her clothes singed, but that didn’t stop her from diving after the message before it could vanish down a crevice. She caught it in one bleeding hand and looked up at Todd. He looked betrayed to find her there instead of safe on the cliffs.
She held up the tube as if that explained everything, but he didn’t seem to understand. The minions, on the other hand, recoiled. She got to her feet and tentatively crept forward, holding the tube in front of her as if it were a sword. The minions retreated even more.
Todd saw them doing so and seized the opportunity to strike one, wounding him on the side. The other two leapt back while the injured, moaning and limping, followed.
“What are you doing?” Todd asked her with an edge to his voice that she wasn’t accustomed to hearing. “Why didn’t you go?”
“I couldn’t,” she explained, coming to his side. “Look!” She pointed back at the basket. Flames had reduced the sticks to ashes, and the fire was climbing up the cliff’s face using the rope as a highway.
The Message, the Power, and the Vow
Todd groaned. He wiped his head, and blood smeared across his face. He couldn’t remember getting injured, but he supposed he must’ve at some point in his short scrimmage with the minions. Yes, he remembered now. One had knocked him on the back of the head with the pommel of his scimitar’s hilt.
Now what? he wondered. Neither of them could escape. Neither of them could go up in the basket. Chaos’s Minions were keeping their distance now, and Todd had wounded one, but they wouldn’t stay back for long. Would they?
In the boulders beyond them and in the trees beyond that, Todd saw more figures. More minions with spears and javelins were approaching.
Mariel then took the pommel of Todd’s sword and slid the Message of Love back into place with a click. It was streaked with her blood, and when Todd grasped it again, it became spotted with his own as well. They didn’t know it at the time, but they were fulfilling their vows, performed by the Oath Maker years ago, whose words were written in the message. Those words said that when two spent their lifeblood for each other while carrying the Message of Love, the power of the sword would awaken.
But since neither Todd nor Mariel knew this and no burst of light or glow emanated from the sword, they merely gazed at the approaching minions with growing dread, unaware that an unseen glory in them now struck fear in all the minions gathering before them.
The enemy numbered eight now, and when they worked up the gumption to approach again, they encircled Todd and Mariel on all sides. This time, they didn’t strike out with weapons but with words.
“You’ve come the wrong way,” they said.
“You couldn’t get up the cliffs.”
“You’re too weak.”
“Everyone else could. But not you.”
“You don’t deserve to carry that message.”
“What’ll you do now?”
“You might as well give up.”
“That’ll be much easier.”
The Bowmen
Then quite unexpectedly, a whip-whizzing sound rang in the couple’s ears. Chaos’s Minions cried out in surprise as arrows rained down at them from the sky. One struck a minion on the back of the neck; he fell dead. Another arrow punctured one’s foot. They shrieked and hollered, scattering like rats for cover as more and more arrows pelted down from the clifftop.
Todd and Mariel clutched each other, wincing at the sound and wondering if perhaps they’d be struck next, but they weren’t. None of the arrows came near them save for one, a flaming one. This one zoomed over their heads before striking the cliff face with an oddly hollow thump. There it remained burning like a torch in a sconce.
The minions scattered as the arrows chased them back from the cliffs, through the boulders, and into the cover of the trees. Only then did the arrows stop.
For several minutes, Todd and Mariel merely held one another. The sun was nearing the horizon, and a warm glow cast them in a soft light as they trembled after what they’d survived. They were hurt and afraid, and because they were hurt and afraid, they were angry too. This prompted them to be terse with each other as they attempted to patch up their wounds with no salve or bandages on hand.
Night was coming, and they feared what they’d do next. They couldn’t go back into the forest for the night; that was where Chaos’s Minions were hiding. And they couldn’t scale the cliffs.
Had they peered heavenward, they might’ve seen the worried faces of those who’d gone before them looking down from the cliff top, hoping the young couple was well, wishing they could do more to help, but unable to do anything.
The Door and the Bowman
Todd and Mariel didn’t look up, but they did peer across the boulder field to the darkening forest where Chaos’s Minions were watching. They could see movement among the trees. More minions had joined the original three. Their dark silhouettes paced back and forth among the tree trunks as if conferring with one another on how to attack again.
Another figure caught Mariel and Todd’s attention. The bearded, armored bowman was still standing on his boulder amid the rocky field. A fiery arrow was notched on his bow, and his flickering lamp sat beside him on the rock. He waited.
Mariel recoiled. “That’s the one who caught my basket on fire,” she told Todd.
They stared at him, and he stared back, but he didn’t shoot. What was he doing? The sight of him reminded Mariel of the arrow that’d whizzed by their heads amid the chaos. She glanced behind them at the cliff’s face and spotted that flaming arrow still burning as it stuck out of the rocks. The tar-covered rag tied around the arrow dripped little blazing drops of black goo onto the ground.
“What are you doing?” Todd asked as she approached it. He kept beside her, keeping an eye on the bowman and the minions.
“This arrow,” Mariel said. “It’s stuck into wood. There’s a wooden board here in the cliff. Right in the rocks! You can hardly see it.”
“What?”
“See.” She pounded on the wood with one bandaged fist, and it made a hollow sound. She flinched at the pain in her hand. “I think it’s a door. Look, there are the edges. This must be another way up the mountain. Or maybe there’s a place here to hide here.”
She fingered the wood, finding the doors’ edges in the fading light. Then she felt a long vertical indentation on one side of the door that seemed to serve as a handle. She worked her fingers into it and yanked, but it was too heavy for her with her injuries. Todd handed her their sword and gave the door a yank himself, but even for him it was difficult. The door hadn’t been used in years, and its weight was tremendous. With much grunting and a joint effort, they finally got the thing open.
A great black yawning mouth met them on the other side, and Mariel shivered. There was nothing to see but the first stone step of an ascending stairwell. Todd stepped back and yanked the flaming arrow out of the door. It would be their only light now as they entered the unknown, and who knew? Maybe there’d be more minions on the way up.
“Stay close,” he told Mariel before stepping inside.
As she took his arm and followed him into the blackness, she glanced back and saw the silhouette of the armored bowman still standing on his boulder. He raised a hand to her and then fired a blazing arrow towards the forest and Chaos’s Minions. The villains screamed and scattered.
At that, Mariel remembered when she and Todd had first begun their journey years ago. The Oath Maker, the one who’d led them through their vows and given them the Sword with its Message of Love, had been an armored bowman himself.
As Todd shut the door behind her and they ascended the supposedly cursed cliffs together in an unknown new way, the words the Oath Maker had said when he’d first commissioned them on their journey came to her mind. She mulled them over as they walked up and up. And when they found a small cave with provisions, salves, oil lamps, straw beds, and blankets, she reminded Todd of the words too.
“I make the oaths and I keep them by my blood so that you, through yours, may ascend by the Message of Love."
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