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Mordred Stewart, Highland Swordsman
I don't think I've ever met anyone quite like this Highlander. We met him in Charouse, defending a young woman from a bunch of revolutionary soldiers attempting to have their way with her. But when we came to his assistance, he seemed quite put out! Still, he's a big fellow that's handy in a fight, so he's fine with me. B.
REFLECTIONS IN AMBER
With a dull thud the tankard of ale spilt onto a much stained table in "La Belle Aurore", a somewhat shady gin palace on the outskirts of Charouse. The tankard had been knocked over by a lanky Highlander, now clearly deep in his cups, his head drooping low. No one at La Belle Aurore knew the foreigner, no one knew his name, Mordred Stewart, nor did the man's aloofness or the all too deadly cleidhmor strapped to his back invite further inquiry. But as the flickering light of the candles danced, reflected in the pool of spilt ale, Mordred's barely conscious eyes seemed to see the tale of his life unfold.
First he saw the image of his father, Alecksanda Stewart, young, tall and strong, a loyal tacksman of the Clan MacDonald, in the half light of the early dawn, striding along the windswept beach of Kilhaidh, an island to the northwest of the Highland Marches. Suddenly a pile of kelp washed up on the beach stirred at Alecksanda's feet, inviting his scrutiny. A quick search revealed the pile in fact to be the half drowned body of an eerily beautiful lass draped with sea weed. Discerning that there was still life within this human flotsam, Alecksanda effortlessly lifted her and carried her to the croft which he shared with his widowed mother. As Mordred watched Alecksanda carry the lass from the shore, unseen by Alecksanda, he thought that he saw a strange wavering sea green glow gleam from under her half closed eyes.
Thereafter scenes flittered past quickly, showing Alecksanda teaching the lass, who was now known as Brigid, the Highland dialect of Avalon. As Mordred was later told, when Brigid was first discovered she could speak no language that any of the folk of Kilhaidh had ever ken before. For her part Brigid professed to have no memory of her past life prior to being found by Alecksanda. Then came scenes of Brigid learning to weave and cook with Mordred's grandmother, scenes of her laughing and dancing with Alecksanda and then a vision of a gay wedding in Kilhaidh Kirk, where the dancing spilled out onto the village square and Mordred could almost hear the singing and bawdy jokes as he gazed into the pool of ale.
The next image that appeared was of a blizzard, of snow and ice as only a Highlander, or perhaps a Vesten, could know. In the blizzard shone a light from a croft, Alecksanda's croft, where an exhausted young woman writhed in the extremis of child birth. It seemed as if Mordred was witnessing his own birth just before Midnight on Midwinter's Night 1641 AV in the middle of the worst blizzard that the Highland Marches had seen in living memory. No doubt that was an omen.
The scene shifted again to Mordred's childhood with images of children playing, sometimes including the unusually tall lad that he recognized to be his younger self, sometimes excluding the often proud and occasionally frightening boy. Mordred could see a weird light shining from his eyes when angered, even as a youngster, which gleam was not unlike that he had seen in Brigid's eyes. But then visions of Alecksanda and Brigid's love for their only child and the high regard with which the people of Kilhaidh held Alecksanda flickered past, reminding him how his boyhood days were largely idyllic. All too soon Mordred saw this idyll end when Brigid was lost at sea shortly after his seventh birthday. He saw Brigid returning from the mainland in his Uncle Hamish's fishing boat as a weird unseasonable mist enmeshed the vessel. When the mist lifted, there was no sign of Brigid, who had evidently fallen overboard. Despite Uncle Hamish's frantic searches she could not be found. Images then passed of Alecksanda spending many weeks at sea trying to find a trace of his lost wife, but without any success, and as the months passed, Alecksanda grew madder and more dour at his loss. With deep sadness Mordred reflected that no word of the fair Brigid ever found its way to Kilhaidh.
He then watched the figures moving in the iridescent mirror of ale as the wee lad deeply mourning the loss of his mother, half abandoned by a heart broken father, soon began to fade himself. In the lad's anger and sadness at his loss, it was as if the clear green-blue of his eyes often ebbed and flowed with disturbing waves, much like the mad toss of a maelstrom at sea. This now isolated the lad from his playmates and Mordred watched with half remembered pain as isolation made the lonely boy react by becoming increasingly proud of the differences which caused his loneliness.
But in Mordred's drunken vision, after the apparent passage of several years, he saw a well dressed boy, almost as old as Mordred, come upon the solitary weeping lad. He recognized the newcomer as Iain MacDonald, the eldest son of the Laird of Kilhaidh, Donald MacDonald, only lately returned to Kilhaidh. Iain tried several times to engage Mordred in conversation, but without success, and Mordred watched Iain turn to go only to stop, apparently remembering a beautiful piece of amber that he had found that very morning and hidden in his pocket. In Mordred's mind's eye he again heard every syllable that the two lads then uttered to each other.
"If, ye can guess, what's in ma pocket laddie, ye can have it."
[Silence]
"I said, that if ye can..."
"I ken what ye said."
"Well what is it, then?"
"I dinnae care, ye daft Bugger."
"Oh well, tis a shame for it be a bonny wee thing."
[hesitation for a moment]
"A sea shell, then?"
"Nae!"
"A gull's egg?"
"Nae!"
"An acorn?"
"Nae and double nae!" [laughter]
Thereafter Mordred again heard his youthful self guess at least a 100 more times. Each guess being wrong, but as each succeeding guess failed the next guess became wilder and sillier. Soon Iain was rolling upon the ground with laughter and, to his own amazement, Mordred began to laugh too. Mordred recalled that although he never guessed that Iain's pocket concealed a piece of amber, somehow it mattered not and the two became firm friends and from that moment Mordred's grief at Brigid's disappearance began to heal.
Visions then appeared in rapid succession showing the two boys as inseparable partners in numerous juvenile crimes, inspired by their more than usual boyish curiosity, which became almost legendary on Kilhaidh. Indeed, on the Island it soon was accepted that if anything was disturbed or had been removed and then replaced in the wrong position, it was sure to have been the work of Mordred and Iain. He watched as Iain and he hunted all over the island, trying to root out its secrets. His ears rang with the echo of lost laughter as the two boys delighted in jokes and languages, some make believe and some real, that their quick ears had picked up or they had simply invented for fun. And then he saw that once the boys felt that they had exhausted the possibilities of Kilhaidh they began to boat extensively to each of the surrounding islands, trying to discover all of their possibilities and long concealed truths.
Again the images shifted to show the boys growing into young men, as Donald MacDonald, now a Master of the MacDonald school, feeling that the only way to curb the boys' mischievous energies was to martial them, began to teach the two lads the tricks and traps of the mighty Highland sword, the claymore or cleidhmor. Both Iain and Mordred took to this drill like ducks to water and Mordred saw Donald's satisfaction as the Laird felt his plan to be working. But sadly it too led to disaster.
It was with anguish that Mordred recalled how shortly after Iain and he achieved their apprentice mastery of MacDonald, the young men decided that they needed a new challenge, one suitable for their new capabilities. And so it was that the two boys, borrowed Donald's finest launch and sailed to the Island of Kolumba, a day's sail to the west.
[Saint Kolumba was said to have been an Avalon who was the first convert of Joseph of Aremacady. Kolumba had then traveled north trying to bring the word of Theus to the Highland Marches, but with only mixed success. His abbey founded on a small north western island flourished for a few centuries until it was sacked by Vesten raiders in the mid 800's AV. All of the monks were massacred by the treasure hunting Vesten, many being tortured before they were slain in the Vestens effort to discover every last hiding place. Since that time, the Island of Kolumba had been abandoned, being believed to be haunted, and was avoided by all sensible souls. This of course excepted two young men, both full of themselves and in need of a new thrill of danger.]
Mordred watched the flickering puddle of ale with increasing dismay as their small boat made its way to the Island of Kolumba. It was with considerable effort that he strangled his warning cries as he gazed at the two youths breaking their way into the crypt beneath the ruined abbey to find what they believed to be the shattered tomb of Saint Kolumba himself. There he saw himself find a remarkably preserved finger bone mounted on a silver chain, wedged between some broken masonry. By that time, however, the vision was darkening as night fell in the crypt.
His head throbbed with the memory of the deafening crash of a defaced head of a nearby statue of the Saint falling to the floor and shattering with a sound of doom just as the relic finally slipped from the stones into his fingers. He saw Iain and himself fleeing the crypt, trying to make their way back to their boat but finding that a thick mist had risen. In the swirling mist voices seemed to shriek and groan, and the two lads were sure they could see evil shapes moving therein. A tear slipped down the weathered cheek of the adult Mordred, as he saw Iain and himself drawing their claymores to attack the shapes in the mist. Slashing and cutting their way through the mad night, somehow they lost their trail and each took different turnings. It was then that tragedy struck.
The winding maze of the ruins led each of the boys around unwittingly into one another's path. By this time mad with fear, Iain and Mordred in their confusion assailed one another, cutting and cleaving with their claymores in an effort to slay whatever ghouls were assaulting them. Finally Mordred's sword made its way past Iain's wildly parrying blade and bit deep into the breast of his beloved friend. When Iain cried out in agony, whatever madness had taken over Mordred passed, and Mordred knew that he had struck down his friend.
Weeping and clutching Iain in his arms, Mordred tried to staunch the horrible wound in Iain's breast. But it was to no avail. Iain's last words to his friend were of love and forgiveness and as his life slipped from him, Iain looked at Mordred and spoke these final words:
"T'was, a bonny bit of amber..."
And with that Iain died, a beautiful rounded piece of amber slipping from his dead grasp. As Mordred watched transfixed he again felt the bite of sorrow, that was still as sharp as that day almost ten long years ago.
Mordred's heart twisted in horror as he relived himself returning to Kilhaidh bearing the riven body of Iain. There Donald's rage was unbounded and he placed a Ban of Exile upon Mordred never to return to the Highlands or his life would be forfeit. All true members of the Clan MacDonald were enjoined by him to enforce the Ban. Mordred was not even permitted to witness the burial of his friend and he saw himself taking passage that very evening on a northbound Castillan whaling schooner, "El Grosso Blanco". Mordred well recollected the solitary figure of the much aged Alecksanda standing on the shore watching as he sailed away from Kilhaidh.
Once again the vision shifted and the tempo of the images accelerated. They flicked over the twelve months of his life spent on board "El Grosso Blanco" until it was smashed by an enraged Leviathan. As one of the few survivors of "El Grosso Blanco" he saw himself picked up by a passing Vendel merchant ship and Mordred was taken to Kirk. The penniless young Highlander there learnt that he was indentured and would have to pay for his rescue voyage by rendering services well befitting a brawny young swordsman. Mordred watched himself become entangled in the seamy underworld of Kirk until after many months of dark and dangerous work in Kirk, feeling that his debt was repaid, he was able to slip away to join a ship en route to Eisen.
Mordred's vision then showed him serving as a mercenary in Eisen for some years as the embers of the War of the Cross sputtered and gradually died out. After the passage of further time he saw the by now scarred veteran receive a battered letter from his Grandmother informing him that his father had died, leaving him a hefty sum of 500 guilders as a result of some mysterious deal struck with a Vendel merchant. This legacy seemed too good to be true? As in fact it was. For Mordred could see in the ale spill numerous dangerous looking Vesten seeking for word of the son of Alecksanda Stewart, making their way slowly but surely south. It was time to leave Eisen.
For a moment the rictus of pain on Mordred's face became a smile as the vision showed himself joining a traveling circus heading towards Montaigne. Here his expertise in ships' rigging soon had him assisting the acrobats with their trapezes. This was a time of peace and pleasure that lasted almost a year until the circus found itself in the wrong place at the wrong time when the revolution broke out. Once again he witnessed the rioters, whether revolutionaries or reactionaries he never knew, smashing the circus completely, killing several of his friends and the survivors dispersing. Thus, effecting the utter destruction of his only true home since leaving Kilhaidh. That had only been a few days before.
Shaking his head, Mordred rose to his feet in rage, drawing his cleidhmor, the piece of amber set in its pommel glowing gold against the light, and brought it smashing down on the table, cleaving it neatly into two. As the last of the ale spill drained away, Mordred's eyes cleared and he again seemed to be in the present, a present filled with memories of loss and wrongs to right.
A stunned silence filled La Belle Aurore. The innkeeper thought for a moment of calling for the Revolutionary Guard to deal with this dangerous sword wielding maniac, but another look at the said vandal suggested that discretion might well be the better part of valor.
"Another tankard of ale, Monsieur?"
But there was no answer other than the slam of the door as Mordred stalked out of La Belle Aurore. The time for reflection was over and the time to act had come.
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