The Lost Tales of Mercia by Jayden Woods

managed to maintain their loyalty despite
everything, and he marched upon the enemy, who did not expect it at
all! Now—did they win or lose? My quill can determine the
answer!”
    Eadric watched with huge eyes, fascinated as
Athelward brought the pen back to paper. Teasingly, he wrote a
quick word.
    Eadric nearly fell off his stool reaching
for the quill. “I want to try! I want to make them win!”
    Athelward pulled it from his reach, but
playfully. “Not so fast, now! You don’t even know how to do
it!”
    “Let me try!” Eadric stood on top of his
stool now, grabbing Athelward’s shoulder for balance as he
reached.
    Before the ealdorman could help it, the
quill had been plucked from his grip. Eadric held it then teetered
forward, falling off the stool and towards the table.
    “No!” cried Athelward. He watched his bottle
of ink tilt sideways, directly over a stack of freshly written
pages. A large jolt went through the table as Eadric landed, making
the wood shudder, the candles flicker, and the bottle fall.
    As Athelward dove forward to catch it, his
heart beat uncontrollably, his blood roared in his ears, and his
thoughts raced so fast they made him dizzy. As his fingertips
clutched for the slippery clay surface of the container, his mind
rushed ahead, watching as the ink spilled out and obscured all of
his hard work, all of his carefully navigated streams, drowning
everything in a blinding flood like the one God gave Noah,
destroying the world so that it could all start anew. He imagined
this, and then he realized that he was imagining it, so maybe none
of it would happen, and he would stop the ink from spilling in
time.
    But by then it was too late.
    The rush of black ink spilled forth,
instantly soaking his pages through, and he was too frozen with
horror to do anything about it. He heard the little boy’s cries
ringing in the air, as if from a distant chamber.
    “Oh no! My lord? My lord!”
    Little Eadric did what he could to belittle
the damage of the flood he had unleashed; he grabbed the pages and
flung them into the air, away from the spreading black deluge. But
it was still too late: all of the pages had been touched. Even if
the words were still legible, the beautiful artistry and
cleanliness of them had been ruined; they would look like the work
of a sorry layman trying to be a scribe, but failing miserably. It
would be a confirmation to everyone who had ever doubted him that
they were right to do so: that God never wanted an ealdorman to
chronicle history, and He especially did not want one to do so in
Latin.
    It was like a sign from the Lord that all of
Athelward’s hard work was meaningless; that his dedication had been
nothing but a conceited fancy. In the end, he was a failure.
    When sensation returned to him, he felt
himself trembling from head to foot. He could hardly find the
strength to speak. The little boy was cowering before him, eyes
filled with tears again, guessing the horribleness of what he had
done.
    “Will I … will I still find out what
happened at the Battle of Ethandun?”
    “Get out,” rasped Athelward. He took a deep
breath, but still he struggled to raise the volume of his voice,
which trembled with the exhaustion of utter despair. “Get.
Out.”
    Eadric obeyed.
    In the little boy’s absence, the room that
had once been his sanctuary felt suddenly like the darkest,
loneliest, and emptiest place on earth.
    *
    Athelward did not speak another word to
anyone all day. His servant, Drustan, discovered what had happened
and knew better than to ask about it; he cleaned it up and closed
the chamber up tight. Athelward sat in his room a long while,
staring into nothingness. Eventually, he found it in his heart to
pray, though he could not do even this for very long. He was simply
too angry. Every once in awhile people knocked on his door, but
Drustan guarded it, and told them all that Athelward was busy.
    When it was time for dinner, Athelward went,
but he sat still and barely