Soldiers of Hope prologue

Prologue • Four Winds Blowing

“Mama, tell me a story!” Selanna tugged on her mother Idorahelda’s skirt, bouncing up and down with the exuberance typical of children her age, and heedless of the fact that her father, having cleaned up the mess Selanna’s baby brother had created at dinner, was advancing on the girl with a damp rag. Selanna’s mother whirled around and fixed an eye on her husband.

“Attacking from behind, Denysos? For shame!” she laughed, and Selanna glanced back.

“No! No!” she squealed, but was grabbed and held firm by her parents and her hands and face wiped clean. “I don’t want to go to bed! Mama promised to tell me a story!” the girl cried, struggling against her father’s arms.

Idorahelda sighed. “All right, fiicha, but just one. When I’m done cleaning up after supper. You can wait like a big girl, right, Selanna?”

The four-year-old beamed. “Yeah!” Denysos put her back on the floor, and she dashed to a stool next to the worn table in the cottage’s largest room, where she sat with her feet swinging, watching until her mother dried her hands and threw the washwater out the window.

“What story do you want to hear, fiicha?” the dark-haired woman asked, leading her daughter to the padded bench along one wall and lifting the child onto her lap. Denysos seated himself in the rocking-chair across the room, patting and rocking baby Edonas to sleep.

“Ummm…” Selanna’s cute brow furrowed in concentration for a moment. “Tell me about the lady-warrior Cludestra!”

Idorahelda grinned and exchanged a look with her husband—a look tinged with significance which Selanna did not detect, and would likely never know. “That’s your favourite, isn’t it, fiicha? Don’t you already know how it goes? Oh, well.” Selanna leaned against her mother’s soft shoulder and listened intently.

“Once upon a time, there was a girl named Cludestra. She had six brothers and sisters, so her parents were always very busy, and so were her brothers and sisters. So Cludestra liked to explore. Her family lived on a great big farm manor next to a forest, and she loved to go in the forest and see all the animals.”

“And fairies! Don’t forget the fairies!” Selanna interrupted.

“Of course, of course. Yes, Cludestra made friends with the fairies in the forest, too, and they told her many things, stories and secrets, and she liked to spend time in the forest better than at home, because her family always wanted her to do things she didn’t want to, like the day they said she was going to get married.” Selanna’s mother paused for a moment for effect; the child was still eagerly listening, eyes atwinkle. “Cludestra knew that the man her parents wanted her to marry was a mean old man, and if she married him, she would have to stay at home and be busy all the time like her parents were, and never be allowed to see her friends in the forest. So you know what she did?”

“She ran away,” Selanna, who did indeed know most of the story by heart, responded.

“That’s right, fiicha. And you should never run away from home, as Cludestra found out, because there are lots of scary things out in the world. There are monsters, and men who are even meaner than the one her parents wanted her to marry, and she was very afraid.”

“Nuh-uh!” Selanna protested. “She was a lady-warrior!”

“Oh, no, child, she wasn’t one yet. She was still a girl—older than you are, Selanna, but still very young. Her fairy friends helped her, and she lived in the forest for a while.”

“Why didn’t her parents come find her?” Selanna asked, though she already knew the answer.

“They were very busy, fiicha, and when they tried, the fairies helped Cludestra hide so she wouldn’t have to go back and marry the mean man. But then, one night, she had a bad dream, and when she woke up, she went back to her parents’ home to find it gone.” Selanna’s eyes were wide. “Some of the very mean men had come there, with war-beasts and magic, and set fire to the house and fields, because a very mean king in another country decided he wanted their land.”

Idorahelda paused; Selanna was still far too young to have the horrors of warfare fully explained to her, so she left that part of the story vague, as she always had. “Cludestra was very sad, because she loved her family even though they weren’t always very nice to her, and she was also very angry at the men who had done this. So she went back to the fairies, and they showed her where there was a magic sword hidden deep in the middle of the forest. She took it, and girded herself in armour, and became a lady-warrior.”

“And she went swashbuckling across the land, saving princesses and slaying dragons,” Denysos said from his seat, gesturing as grandly as he could with a swaddled baby leaning on his shoulder. Idorahelda chuckled.

“Yes, that she did. And she met others who were adventurers like her, and together, they defeated the evil king and brought peace to Magondriss.”

“More! Mama, I wanna hear more!” Selanna said.

“Not tonight, fiicha. You’re tired—I saw that yawn! Come, let’s get you to bed.”

The story of Cludestra was always Selanna’s favourite, and as she grew older, her mother told it again and again, including the parts that she had left out before, so that many years later when Selanna had her own children, she knew the tale as well as if she had lived it herself. Still more years after that, Idorahelda and Denysos’ grandson Staly related it to his travelling companions: a story of the heroine who had saved their kingdom, unembroidered by the minstrels who had spun Cludestra’s legend into a grand epic, but just as glorious.