When all the others had left her regiment tent Airka sat down.  She tried to take a breath to steady herself and when her nerves refused to relax she wondered for a moment if they had any wine left.  The thought sent her mind down a list of their logistics and what she still felt she’d need to send everyone home, everyone who was left, once this was over.  Perhaps strangely, working through their remaining supplies calmed here.  Even so, Airka sat for a minute longer, fretting over the limited time she had, before she finally stood and walked over to her bed.  She reached under and pulled out the old footlocker.  This wasn’t the command chest she’d inherited when her Lieutenant had fallen in battle.  This was the footlocker she had loaded up when she had left home when the call had reached her parent’s farm, now her farm, for soldiers to fight in the war against Aus Argentum.

Airka’s parents had fretted over her going but they hadn’t tried to stop her.  They’d all heard of the tension along the border for the last few years, and they had received word of the attack on one of the forts that had preceded the call for soldiers.  No, rather they had made sure that Airka had the best they could provide for her future.  Her mother had given her the fur cloak that Airka’s father had made for her when they were courting.  Airka’s father had made sure she had the best boots they could find, boots that Airka was still wearing.  The last thing though had been something special, something Airka’s mother had passed on only on the even of her daughter’s departure.

“The first Dawn Queen is dead but they say that Aramil, the Dusk King, is still there in the towers of Aus Argentum.”  This had been a strange enough start of a conversation for Airka.  They had talked of the rulers of Aus Argentum before but rarely those of the past, at least not outside of the context of the stories of Airka’s family.  “What Aramil should remember, and what he and Kalitz should have passed onto their heirs, is that the third lord is still out here and that under the pact Quartes made on the Silver Three that third lord has the right to challenge the decisions of the other two.”  When Airka’s mother had finished the women had lifted a parcel and handed it to Airka.  “To make sure they listen should you ever find yourself before them.”

Airka had known then what the parcel contained .  Early in the war she had thought to produce it, to march off to Koric and force an opportunity to meet with the current Dawn Queen.  Airka hadn’t,  had her line been one to desire the call for lordship, to lightly invoke it, they would not be where they were now.  For while Aramil, Kalitz, and Brokel had fought besides the Landian Quartes, only Brokel walked away once they had slain the Dragon of the North and laid the way for the resurrection of the Silver Kingdom.

Brokel fought hard for his peace and his family had carried on that isolation, while carrying on a tradition that helped to make sure Airka had survived a few of the fights which she had been in over the last year.  

So, despite dreams at times of what she could do with it, Airka had taken the parcel, put it in her footlocker, and had ensured it had stayed hidden there.

She undid the latches of her footlocker, her hands now shaking moving, slowly as if bogged down by the very weight of the moment.  Finally she undid the last clasp and pulled open the lid.  Within were the remnants of the life Airka had outside the war.  The clothes she’d joined in, a spare she’d left with.  Simple practical clothes of a farmer waiting to return to their old life.  A few trinkets picked up as the war had sent her marching across the Provinces.

Nestled amongst it all was the parcel.

When Airka had put the parcel in the footlocker it seemed like it belonged.  Now it seemed out of place.  She reached out and took the parcel, the cloth still the off white from when she’d gotten it, the rough cloth that had come from the same spool as her family had used for the table clothes and the curtains.  Moving to the bed, Airka sat and rested the parcel in her lap, felts it weight there, and then with the same weighted hands she unfurled it.  One fold, another, and a final one and then she could see it again.

It was the first time she’d seen it since her childhood, when he grandmother had sat her down to explain the legacy of their family.

The spearhead gleamed.  No doubt the oiled cloth help but it had taken the trials of the last year better than any steel should’ve.  The fact that the spearhead wasn’t steel was only the beginning of what made it unique.  It’s said that illithimar, the fabled metal of the Hendark mountains, can only be forged into what its own story desires to be, that it’s built in stubbornness is what helps to inflict some sort of order on Illithiust.  People of course had found a way around that.  This spearhead, as Airka’s grandmother had told her, was only an alloy of the rare metal.

Except for one part.  Glimmering in the center, irregular shape, and a bluish tint was what made the spearhead special.  That shape was an embedded fragment of a true blade of illithimar.  A shard of the fabled Sword of Lehn.  Legendary sword of the Landian Quartes.  Airka pressed her palm against the metal, felt the tingle running along her skin, heard the low cackle emanating from it.  The feeling had a warmth, a gentle embrace, from a long separated friend that seemed happy at the meeting.  Airka as a child had asked her grandmother why they had been allowed to keep the blade.  She’d heard stories by then of Quartes and his wielding of the Shards of Lehn, the shattered the ancient sword that even in pieces was mightier than any weapon that remained in Illithiust.  Many a bardic story covered the quest of Quartes to reclaim shards from dragon hordes or nomadic cults.

Yet Quartes had left the blade with Brokel when he had met Airka’s great-grandfather, had left it with Brokel even when the Landian took the rest of his shards and departed Illithiust.

Her grandmother had told Airka that the reason was because Quartes saw kinship in Brokel.  That the Landian wished to have something of himself that he could trust left in Illithiust.  That despite the Dawn Queen and Dusk King’s claims as the heirs of the Landian’s legacy, Brokel and his heirs were truly the caretakers of what Quartes had left behind.  That like Quartes, Brokel and his kin only needed to be known by the strength of their actions and not by some title.

Airka took her time inspecting the spearhead but found no flaw in its edges or hilt.  She walked over to the other side of the room and retrieved a blank spear haft.  She could take the spearhead and haft down to their smith and have them fixed to one another but the war had long taught Airka how to care for her gear.  She pulled a small kit, a square anvil and hammer, the pins she needed.  First she pinned and peened a boss to one end of the haft.  Then she set the spearhead upon the haft’s other end.  She aligned the pin and slotted it through, resting it on the anvil and raising her hammer.

She wondered briefly how long it had been since the spearhead had been set to haft.  How long it had been since Brokel’s spear and its Shard of Lehn, had been readied for war.  In her mind she knew that striking the blow, readying the spearhead for war once more, would not be something she’s ever be able to turn back from.

Briefly, she wondered if it had ever been used to kill Hunai and Aenesi before.

Airka struck hammer to pin, an azure ark of lightning jumped from the blow, illuminating the tent in bright light that faded but not without the low rumbled of thunder.  A remnant of the past or the start of a new path, either way Airka refused to turned back now.