Yeeeees, there's a story burbling around in my feverish brain. I'm giving it the working title you see right here, An Eagle's Flight, but it could wind up called An Eagle Flies, or Where Eagles Fly, something along those lines. Don't hold me to the title you see here. But --
-- view this one full sized, and you'll see that this is the same character as the warrior on the cover. Call him Orel (at this point; the name might change later, along with the story title, though I doubt it for reasons that will shortly become clear). This is where the story begins: the reluctant hero, a man trying to outrun his own reputation ... thrice decorated by the Queen of Zarabia after extraordinary feats in battle. But those feats came at a dreadful price. Orel doesn't sleep, he dreams ... he feels possessed by the spirits of the warriors he's killed in the service of the Queen. She's old, and she dotes on him; she's like his grandmother, which is saying a lot. Orel is not native to this country. He's from the east, and arrived as an orphan boy just old enough to walk. He knew only his name. In the common tongue of Vennia, Orel means eagle. Queen Isabeau gives him his ticket of leave from the regiment and a heavy purse, so Orel can take his cats and his horses, take to the backroads in a Vardo like those belonging to his own people ... and find himself, get his heart and mind back into synch. But --
-- yep, it was always on the cards. He hasn't been on the road more than five or six months -- just long enough to watch springtime turn to autumn, and start to feel like a human being again (not because he's sleeping better or not dreaming, but because he and his ghosts have made their peace) -- when he runs into a couple of old comrades from the regiment. Gianna and Lynos have just left the service, and have taken soldiering work in the pay of a local thane, who advertised that he wanted border scouts. This was what they signed up for, but Count Radriq double-talked them with a binding contract ... they didn't read the fine print. Now, rather than just scouting up the source of trouble on the borderlands between Zarabia and neighbouring Kedd, Orel's old army mates are expected to root out the trouble. Since it's big trouble and they're massively outnumbered, they're up against a rather nasty wall. If they renege on the contract, they'll never get this work again, and it's all they're trained for. They're stuck, like flies in amber. So, when they meet Orel by chance, obviously they're recruiting. Or at the very least begging for help. The problem is this dude:
His name is Jevenni and he's baaaad. This Keddish warlord is building himself a rogue empire, and the bricks of its foundations are piracy, highway robbery, pillage, people-trafficking, whatever it takes. He has no scruples, and in this last twelve months has become the bane of the local thane's life. Count Radriq wants the Keddish land pirates gone, and he's holding Gianna and Lynos to the letter of a contract they signed too fast, in ignorance. Enter Orel. Help! So...
...they talk him into it, naturally enough. He's not the type to abandon friends in need. There's a couple of things he suggests: they must hire a good lawyer from Queen Isabeau's own staff, get him here, and have him reduce Count Radriq and his documentation to legal confetti. A lawyer from the capital will cost a great deal of money, but Gianna and Lynos know just where to get it. Jevenni has stolen wagonloads of valuables from the nobles of Count Radriq's fiefdom, and generous rewards have been posted. If they can recover even a tenth of what the warlord has taken, a lawyer from the city of Enashla will settle Radriq. Now...
...we launch into several episodic misadventures which are the meat-and-potatoes of true quest-fic, and it all leads eventually, inevitably, to this place: the land pirates' stronghold, in the ancient, ruined city of Ul-kedd-innu. To the horizon, the dead city lies smashed as a result of war, earthquake and plague more than a century in the past. Now, it is bleached bones and granite slabs. Jevenni has carved out his citadel in what used to be the palace and fortress, on the highest point, overlooking the fields of rubble-strewn desolation. According to everything his men divulge -- when captured and made drunk as lords -- he's so complacent, he doesn't post guards. In fact, it's a point of honour that he refuses to post guards: sentries and troops would only acknowledge that he is vulnerable in the heart of his own domain -- Jevenni would deny this to the death. With this information, Orel, the much-decorated veteran, favourite of the Her Serene Majesty, browbeats Count Radriq into providing a detachment from his household cavalry. But the force will hold back in the forest, waiting for a signal and letting the three specialists go in by stealth ... on the understanding that one man can pass where an army couldn't, and a specialist in creating havoc might bring the whole edifice tumbling down before the enemy knew it was happening. Under cover of darkness, in we go --
...long story short: subterfuge, stealth, swordfights and a liberal dash of strange sorcery, and by morning, the land pirates have scattered like roaches. Jevenni is extremely dead, and dawn finds Orel on the crenelated roof of the old fortress, right above the warlord's lair. Under the free, open sky, he is once again making peace with his ghosts and his father's old gods. The eagle -- for this is his name -- is trying very hard indeed to fly high and free, but will his flight carry him away from trouble, or right to the next battlefield? No one knows. Both Gianna and Lynos are injured, though not badly. They sent up the signal flare; the count's cavalry came in fast to scour the ruins for prisoners, and now Gianna and Lynos are only looking for the warlord's cache. They find it -- but in any case, they have actually fulfilled the contract. They no longer need a lawyer from Enashla. They take a portion of the spoils for themselves, as is only fair, and for himself, Orel takes enough to buy him the time, peace and quiet to begin again...
...and the story ends with a full-circle moment, right back where it began. At dawn, Orel hitches up his horses, stocks the Vardo, and is on the road again, headed away from anything remotely like a battlefield. In his ears, the ghosts' thin voices continue to whisper, but he has made his peace with some of them, and believes the others can be persuaded in time. The new sun is warm on his face, the open sky and moors lie ahead in the west, with snow-crowned mountains ringing a horizon so vast, it looks like the whole world. Now, perhaps the eagle can fly free after all.
ooOOooOOooOOoo
So ends this basic plot. In the writing, the details will change; names will change; a map will be sorted out, and the episodic parts will be tied down into a tight-knit structure. But this is more than enough to get my muse quite excited, and I think I'll enjoy writing this one. The art is not new. These are all 2019-2021 renders, featuring G8 Dae as Orel, G8 Rex as Lynos ... and I can't remember the G8 Female character who appears as Gianna, but she's in the DAZ library somewhere. That's the good old Millennium Horse, plus the DAZ Cat, many, many foliage and furniture props, and the old Gypsy Wagon from Renderosity. Everything here was rendered in Iray; a couple were painted comprehensively in Photoshop afterward. I was messing about with images and ended up, by chance, with these open in Irfanvew, in sequence ... the story just popped out at me!
