My body was already shivering, ice was forming on my clothes, my eyelashes, my parka.
“Come on,” Rose butt in between us. “She needs warm clothing. Please tell me someone packed a spare.”
“I-I-I have a spare parka in my bag,” I said.
“Okay, that’s good,” Rosamund said. “We need other things. Socks, pants, a shirt, an overshirt. Come on, I know you all like to get pretty. Soren, do you have anything?”
Soren turned sharply from where he was still staring in the water, his features twisted from guilt. “Yeah,” he coughed. “Let me grab my bag.” He slung the bag off his shoulder and quickly pulled out an undershirt and a few overshirts as Diaval handed me a pair of fur-lined pants.
The clothes I was wearing had turned to ice, and Diaval had to quickly help me pry them off, before handing me whichever piece of clothing to replace it fast enough so the cold couldn’t set into my skin and bones and turn them black. Out of the five of them, only Lydian turned away fully as I dressed—I was grateful for that. More of a spiteful grateful because I had a hunch that my disfigurements by him made him uncomfortable, and I wouldn’t pass up a chance to remind him in any way what he did to me. He deserved to feel awful toward me.
The second the cold hit my naked skin, my body nearly doubled over, but I was quickly covered by the clothing donations from the others. I was swimming in them; even Diaval’s, who was short like me, hung from my body and sagged. But they were warm, and truly that was all that mattered.
“Are you okay, Janneke?” Seppo asked, concern filling his voice.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m fine. I don’t exactly know how I’m fine, but I’m fine.”
I turned to Soren, but he wouldn’t face me. His shoulders sagged forward, and he was muttering a string of curses under his breath. When I reached for the usual golden strings that tied us together in my mind, I found they had turned a dark, almost black, blue. I could barely breathe through the despair and loathing sitting on my chest as the scene of me falling in the ice went along over and over again in his head. His thoughts went past in a stream too fast for me to fully read—but I got the gist anyway. All insults. All directed toward himself.
I ached to talk to him, but we couldn’t do it on the gauntlet.
“We should start up again,” I said.
“You sure?” Diaval said. “You’re feeling up to it?”
“Doesn’t matter if she is,” Lydian said. “We can’t stay on this path. No shelter. We don’t want to be out in the open when it gets dark.”
With that, he began his delicate walk across the thin ice, and I followed with the others behind me. Soren was at the end of the train, almost dragging himself along. I winced at the sight.
“So, can you see them?” Lydian asked, not looking at me.
“See what?”
“Look at the ground.”
Scowling at his tone, I did as he said and looked at the ground. The icy ground and the wind blowing the frost around distracted me as it hid what looked like an invisible dome around us and anything blown by the wind redirected to above us and the other side below.
But that wasn’t what caught my eye. What caught my eye was the bloodred stain on the ground. Like someone had taken a paintbrush covered in blood and quickly applied it in a long line going forward, twisting and bending, until it was out of my sight.
“Those are the pathways you see,” I said to Lydian.
“And now you see them too,” he said. “If you look closely, you’ll see thousands of little lines coming out of everything, you, all the people around you, every tree, shrub, stone, and twig.”
“We don’t have stones, trees, shrubs, and twigs,” I responded, mainly to antagonize him.
“You get my point. You see the lines. Each individual string is a path, a destiny that may or may not happen. You can’t follow them unless they cross your own, love. You won’t know what happens unless your path intertwines. Or, unless you’re me.” Lydian sighed, shaking his head. “And I’d rather not know either, but that arrow’s already been fired.”
It was quiet, and I fumed slightly as we slowly completed the gauntlet. Ice and mist began to blow in the air, their swirls blocking our vision again. The once-clear ice had the ice dust drifting off its surface and into the air, twinkling with the colors of the rainbow. The sun lowered in the sky as we took each step as carefully as we would enter a sleeping lindworm’s cave, and the slow pace may have been making my muscles ache to move faster and sprint across the ice, but walking with careful steps proved to be what kept us afloat on the thin, breakable ice.
Finally, when Lydian stopped and turned back around, I breathed a sigh of relief. “This is where the gauntlet ends. The rest will be mostly regular ice, some may have thin patches but that’s more of a problem with ice in general.” He shielded his gaze with his hand as he looked behind us into the distance. “We’ve been moving quickly. That’s good.”
“What about Hel? Won’t she be sending monsters?” Diaval asked.
“Most likely. She could also wait for us to die. We’re still in a very dangerous place and she knows that. If she thinks we’re going to fail, the safer we’ll be. Even if she sent anyone out to hunt us down, they probably won’t reach us for another day or so. Maybe less due to the time we passed waiting for Janneke to surface. It depends on who she sends.”
“Don’t say that like it’s my fault,” I growled.
“You’re right. If anything, it’s my fault,” Soren said. “I’m making us lag behind. I should stay here, offer myself as bait. Maybe catch up to you, maybe not.”
The urge to slap him was particularly overwhelming. “You are the fucking Erlking, Soren. So what? You lost part of your face. I lost part of my chest. I’m full of scars, you’re full of scars. We both have bad memories to conquer.” I stepped toward him and gave him a light shove on the chest. “I know it’s hard and I know it’s emasculating. I’m not a newcomer to goblin culture. I know you feel desperate and worthless, and I know you don’t understand the point of why you’re still alive as if the point isn’t standing in front of you and all around you, listening to you mope like a child. You lost your eye. So what? You can relearn to fight. I fell in the water. So what? I’m fine.” I took a breath, so I would stop shouting at him. “You are more than your goddamn eye. I wish I could get that through to you. I know it’s hard. But we don’t have time for an identity crisis right now.”
I was being harsh, and I knew it. If someone had come at me like I was going at Soren, a mere day after Lydian had destroyed parts of my body, I would have raged and raged until there was nothing left inside of me. I was being a hypocrite to try to force Soren to get over his lost eye even a little bit, but it was true—we had no time for him to fall away into a dark space of his mind. It wasn’t safe, not for him, not for the mission, not for everyone else. It stung to be so tough on him, knowing that I went through something so similar and how long it took until the pain eventually ebbed for me, but I didn’t think I had a choice.
He still was unable to meet my gaze.
“I’m trying to softly encourage you and give you space to process, but I’m not going to let these suicidal thoughts rule over your head. I’m not going to let you wallow in self-pity until you drown. You’re the Erlking, Soren. After all that’s happened, you’re still the Erlking. That should at least tell you something.” My voice was halfway between a beg and a command. The pain in his heart was like nails lodged into an already-broken chest, pushed through the ribcage, and into his heart, his lungs, into his very spine. I knew that hurt, and I knew how tough it was to let it go, and I couldn’t judge him for it nor how severely he acted toward it because once upon a time, I was there too.
I took two steps forward and pressed my palms gently to his cheeks before raising his head so he could look me in the eyes. I stared into his remaining eye, still so beautiful, and I slowly took off the bandage that hid his socket, and then gazed upon both sides of his face, never flinching from the now-h
ealed, dry wound.
There was no lying that it was a serious wound. I could see where the fangs had entered through the deep marks on his forehead and follow the carved flesh as it went through his eye socket and out of his cheek. It was angry still and pink, and I had no doubt that it hurt so badly.
“I know you may not hear this from me, it might go in one ear and out the other,” I said, “but you’re beautiful and handsome and fierce to me, and one day you’re going to think that again and I’m going to be there because I will always be there. It may take a month, a year, a hundred, or even a thousand.” I dropped my hand to his and squeezed tight. “But I will be with you.”
Soren took another moment before he said something. His eye flickered above my head to the others watching, and I could feel the glare as they all took a step back with boots crunching in the ice. “I feel like a child. I’m being a brat, I know. I just … feel helpless and that’s never been a feeling before. I’ve known since I was six that I could knock down a grown goblin standing, and now I can barely use a sword, much less my bow and arrows. I became the Erlking, but how can I be the strongest goblin in the Permafrost if I can’t even fight?”
“You don’t need to fight to be strong,” I told him. “Sometimes the strongest thing we do all day is wake up and get out of bed and continue living and figuring out new ways to do the things we once did.” I held out a hand. “Walk with me, please.”
He nodded warily and grasped my hand with his as we walked back toward the group who all were doing their best not to pay us any extra attention. I had a feeling goblins didn’t normally have heart-to-hearts regarding weakness and strength and the meaning behind it all.
The day continued the same as it had yesterday, cold, irritating, but thankfully boring. My insides warmed when Soren and I caught up to Rosamund, and they began questioning each other about where they lived before court. From side by side, there were definitely similarities. Both had sharp jawlines and thick hair, though very different shades, both had eyes slightly tilted upward at the back corner, giving an odd feline-predator expression to their faces. But Soren had a widow’s peak where Rose did not, and Rose’s cheeks were much fuller than Soren’s nearly gaunt-looking cheekbones.
“You said you grew up near White Fang River?” Soren asked.
“Yeah, close enough to walk to it and back without wasting much time.”
“Tanya told me my mother used to have a small house there, not a manor or anything, and she liked to visit that part of the woods.”
“My mother raised me in a little house.”
“Made by wood and stone? Fire-warmed?” Soren asked.
Rosamund nodded.
“Guess that means I’m older than you.”
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t get too cocky, cousin.”
I snickered at the two of them. When they weren’t at each other’s throats due to some insignificant thing, they actually got on quite well together. Behind us, Seppo happily bit his lip while trying to keep from splitting his face open from smiling; any outward acceptance of Rosamund also meant outward acceptance of the red-haired goblin’s and his relationship. For now, the weight pressing down on my chest had lifted slightly, and I could breathe easier than I could in days. I had no doubt I’d have to speak to Soren again, this stuff didn’t exactly stick around the first time you heard it, but I understood because I’d been there, and thinking back over the many times he’d been there for me—even if I hadn’t recognized it in my blind pain and hatred—I now knew the lengths he’d gone to keep me sane after my trauma. I would do the same for him.
Lydian had us stop when the sun was more than three quarters of the way down, pointing out another well-built snow den. “We stay here until first light. If we’re lucky, we could be able to cross the void into the two worlds by two more days.” He pointed to a dark, thickened bloodred line that only he and I could see.
“I have a feeling we won’t get there undisturbed,” Diaval said, having chosen a space to sit, and was now cross-legged with her eyes closed, palms up. Little bits of electric blue crackled from her fingertips.
“I’m not magical or anything, but Diaval’s probably right.” Seppo raised his voice in agreement. “Hope this time it’s a person and not a giant animal.”
I raised my eyebrows toward him and he shrugged back. “I don’t know what you think,” he said, “but I prefer to fight things of the humanoid variety. It’s a lot easier to tell where you need to stab.”
I gave him that.
* * *
WE’D ONLY BEEN walking the path for a few hours the next day when there was a piercing cry overhead. Everyone ducked as a winged monster swooped down at us with its sharp, bloody talons. The overgrown bird landed on the air like it was a tree branch and cawed at us with a shriek so shrill blood trickled down my ears. They rang, and for a minute all I could hear was the loud piercing ring. I’d never understood why they called it deafening silence before, but as my head vibrated from the sound yet refused any new sound in, I thought I now knew.
“Fuck,” Soren muttered from beside me. “That’s Hraesvelg.” The mighty corpse-eating eagle flapped its wings, and we all flew back from the wind it created.
Hraesvelg. The giant eagle who ate the dead who escaped from Hel. Whose wings were so fierce, they caused the very winds to blow. Couldn’t Hel send some nice, happy draugrs at us instead? Maybe a giant wolf or two? Something that stayed on the ground?
Eagle was a generous term for it. It had a massive wingspan, almost as large as a common dragon, and a cruel pointed beak from where rotting viscera hung. Its feathers were full of the arrows and spear tips of people who had tried to kill it before and failed. Both of its eyes were bloodshot with clear liquid running from the corner down its sharp beak.
I groaned and took a few arrows into my fingers, holding the extras in between my non-shooting fingers. We all backed up into a fighting stance, everyone’s backs touching one another’s to make sure that every spot was covered as the giant eagle’s wings caused the mist and ice dust to swirl in the air like a storm so thick I could hardly see the enemy above.
Then the thing swooped down upon us, breaking our circle moments after we made it, each of us blown in different directions by powerful wings.
I let loose an arrow and it sank into the monster’s chest but had no signs of slowing it down. I muttered a swear under my breath. Soren and I were the only bow users here, and Soren couldn’t even use his. Unless Rose, Seppo, or Lydian developed a startling ability to walk on air, they were all useless.
A wave of blue magic swept past my face, hitting the eagle in the eye. It shrieked and lunged blindly down, and I got another arrow in its stomach but it still wasn’t enough to fell it.
“I’ve got your back,” Diaval called out.
Somehow I managed to forget—Diaval didn’t use any weapons other than her magic and whatever rituals and divinations it came with—I wasn’t as alone as I’d thought.
We kept moving, Diaval and I, one of us shooting, arrow or magic, it didn’t matter which, while the other one ran to the open space the last shot created and made our own mark, dancing around the eagle like two smaller, pissed-off birds. At one point Diaval winced as a talon tore into her thick pants but shook it off and continued the fight.
The idea was working as the eagle was beginning to flap slower, its bursts of wind losing the strength to blow us down. But when I aimed another arrow at it, I was shocked to see a different arrow fly into the air. It didn’t hit the eagle at all, and I mentally swore as the eagle began to dive bomb the new target: Soren.
I raced across the ice and knocked Soren to the ground in time for us to miss a swoop of its mighty talons.
“What were you thinking?” I shouted, nearly out of breath.
“I can help. I have arrows,” Soren said.
“You can’t shoot! You have no depth perception! You nearly killed yourself!” I shouted back, desperation in my voice. The thought of having lost him burned i
n the back of my throat. “Give me those arrows and go over to the others who can’t do anything this time around. I’ve got enough to worry about without worrying you’ll be dead!”
He grunted and shoved his quiver in my arm. I laced it across my back, looking toward the count of arrows in my own quiver. Damn. If felling the eagle took all my arrows and the corpse wasn’t close enough to the path, I’d be screwed.
“Stupid single-use projectiles,” I muttered as Diaval gave the eagle another blast of magic.
I had to make a decision quickly. Diaval had a limit to her magic, and sooner or later I’d run out of arrows. We needed to take this thing down, now.
“Diaval,” I shouted, “get it to show me its face, the eyes, I need its eyes.”
She grunted and nodded, springing up again and blasting the eagle toward my direction. I held my arrow strong and tight, waiting for the exact moment when the eagle would fall backward before regaining its notion of gravity. Waiting until one of its beady eyes opened … and there.
I released the arrow and it soared straight across the sky into the eagle’s eye and nearly through the other side. The giant bird fell with a heavy thump, and Diaval ran up to it, making sure it had truly died.
When she did, I went through the gruesome task of pulling all the unbroken arrows from its body and cleaning them with a stray cloth. Not just mine either. If any of the older arrows still had any kick to them, I scavenged them too. You could never have too many arrows. Steam rose from its guts and the smell was rank, but the warmth sure made up for it.
* * *
WHEN WE BEDDED down for the night, I held Soren close to me, his head this time on my chest, and stroked his cheek. “I’m sorry,” I started, “if what I said during the battle hurt you. I know it was insensitive of me. I … I was concentrating on so many things, and I couldn’t stand to have you hurt.”
Soren nodded. “I understand,” he said, hot breath against my chest. “I should have gone with the others. I didn’t want to be a … didn’t want to be a liability.”
Goblin King Page 20
