by T. C. Edge
A smile curls on the young man’s face.
“He taught me,” he says.
225
Alongside my new fighting companion, I slip from one skirmish to the next. We add our blades to each, the Bear-Skins now unable to withstand the onslaught as they’re quickly dispatched.
Like powerful elk surrounded by the snapping jaws of jackals, we prod and poke with sharp tips, wearing some of the larger men down as we try to dodge their swinging blows. With my body still brimming, I utilise whatever Dasher energy remains in me, swirling in and ending several more men before they can deliver a fatal blow.
Soon enough, all of our enemy are spent. All but one.
The remaining Fangs gather around the final fight, the forest now silent but for the dying groans of men, and the single song of combat that still remains.
Zander staggers down from the tree to stand beside me, and together we make a large circle around Bjorn and Rhoth as the two leaders part. Both men draw in heavy breaths, and both bleed from multiple gashes and wounds across their limbs.
We hold our spears and daggers and throwing knives aloft, ready to charge in and swarm all over the giant. Rhoth lifts a blood-drenched hand, preventing a single new combatant from entering the circle.
“This fight is between Bjorn and me. No one will interfere, not even if I die,” he says. “The victor will go free.”
He never takes his eyes off Bjorn as he speaks. The Brute stares at him with a measure of respect, and drops his chin into a little nod.
“Stand back now,” says Rhoth. “Give us the space to finish this.”
As we draw away, widening the circle, I wonder whether I’ll be able to keep Rhoth’s promise. If Bjorn should strike him down, I can’t say I won’t try to avenge him. But it’s not my place to do such a thing. If his men can honour the terms, then I suppose I’ll have no choice either.
Stark faces watch on as the battle resumes. Standing next to West, I see his youthful face crinkle and grow old with worry, his eyebrows pinching and lips quivering and teeth gnashing each time a blow looks set to strike.
The rest of the remaining Fangs carry similar expressions, displaying the caring they hold for their leader. And it’s something I can understand. Even in my brief encounters with these people, and with Rhoth in particular, I’ve found myself drawn into their world. I consider them my kin.
The two leaders circle each other, fatigue now beginning to set in. They work clockwise, before going the other way, Rhoth snipping and jabbing, Bjorn swinging and hacking.
Occasionally, slow periods are followed by sudden bouts of ferocity. As Bjorn steps forward with a horizontal swipe, Rhoth ducks low and reaches out for the great bear’s belly. It’s enough to pierce his armour of hides and thick fur, slicing a gash across his abdomen.
A bellow clatters up into the sky, and Bjorn unleashes a devastating series of attacks. He swings with a blend of ferocious control, forcing Rhoth to retreat and parry and step around a tree for protection. Such is the strength of the mighty beast that his axe cuts straight through the bark, felling the tower and sending it creaking and breaking and falling down to the earth.
The Fangs below it scatter like mice beneath the shadow of a hawk, breaking apart the circle. The distraction is enough to have Bjorn launching himself forward, bounding towards his foe and drawing a blade from his belt. He cuts with speed, the lighter weapon hastening his diagonal blows, but Rhoth is just quick enough to see it coming.
I shout “lookout!” by instinct and Rhoth rolls to the side beneath the knife, appearing up behind Bjorn and drawing open the flesh of his upper arm. The gash peels and red blood spills, and Bjorn suddenly staggers as if the accumulating loss of blood is having an effect.
His eyes turn more feral than ever, and they look at me as if I’m to blame. He seems to forget everything else for a second and comes marching my way, a hatred beyond reckoning infusing his every shuddering step.
“Where are you going, Bjorn?!” roars Rhoth. “You too afraid to fight me now? You think a girl-cub is a better match for you?”
Bjorn stops in his tracks. Laughter fills the air. He looks around in fury at the faces that stare at him, and seems to see beyond them for the first time, at the forms of his men littering the dirt.
A crack of thunder escapes his chest, his neck twisting skyward and gaping mouth opening wide. Blood trickles from a dozen wounds, now pooling on the ground whenever he stays in one place too long. All over, the earth is stained crimson, the sheer volume of the stuff within the giant enough to paint a mansion red.
He sets his eyes back on Rhoth again, and musters the final shreds of strength within him. He paces forward. Rhoth stays still, watching with the attention of a bird of prey and seeking an opening. Bjorn discards his heavy axe and lifts only his short sword, ready to swipe. Rhoth notes the motion, foresees its path, and makes the appropriate move to the left.
Were Rhoth’s head not already shaven, the swinging blade would have sheared his hair clean off. It strokes across his scalp, mere millimetres from meeting his skull, and Rhoth replies with a strike of his own.
With all his energy pressed into the attack, Bjorn’s midsection awaits, defenceless. It’s a large target, and across his sides where his armouring is weaker, Rhoth stabs his jagged blade with the strength of a wild boar. It cuts in, entering his flesh, seeking the depths of his body as a full foot of metal embeds itself within him.
The reaction on Bjorn’s face is one of utter agony. But more than that, it’s one of defeat. He gasps for air as Rhoth pulls the handle of the blade up, then twists to ensure the wound can’t close.
Stepping back, the dagger comes with him, producing a gush of blood as it withdraws. Bjorn tries to stay on his feet but can’t. He falls forward onto a single knee, clutching at his side, wondering how his hunt came to this. Wondering how he, so mighty as he is, could have been bested by a man of such comparatively feeble size.
But size isn’t everything. Rhoth had speed, skill, accuracy, and smarts. Bjorn lacked too much for his monolithic frame to make up, counting only on his strength and ferocity to see him through. He’ll have spent his entire life cleaving his enemies in two. But today he met his match.
As the blood seeps from between his fingers, and his skin begins to pale, Rhoth seems to look at him in a different way. Despite their differences, there looks to be a vein of respect and honour between them, and with Bjorn now drawing in his dying breaths, it’s all that remains.
Rhoth kneels before him, and they come face to face a final time. The anger and rage seems to escape Bjorn’s body along with the blood, his wheezing, ragged breaths growing shallow.
“You fought well,” he says. “I was beaten…by…the better…man.”
He reaches out a huge, bloodied paw, and Rhoth’s hand comes forward and clasps it. And in silence, Bjorn dies, holding the hand of his sworn enemy.
The hand of the man who killed him.
226
The hours that follow the battle are those of silence and reflection.
No songs are sung of victory. No smiles are raised on those that survived. The Fangs, shorn of most of their number, go about the process of cremating their brothers with sober expressions and introspective grief.
Rhoth leads, despite his many wounds that need attention. As Kervan returns and looks upon the field of the dead, he grasps the great Fang’s blood-soaked forearm and thanks him for what he’s done.
“You will always be a friend to the Roosters,” he says. “Tonight, we will honour you.”
Rhoth remarks that the only honouring he desires is in aiding them in building the pyres. Kervan immediately calls for the villagers to come forth and lend their hands. They do so with calm efficiency, gathering wood and bodies, clearing the battlefield of weapons, giving thanks to the Fangs through their actions if not their words.
Many pyres are built. Not only for the Fangs, but for the Bear-Skins too. Kervan appears opposed to the idea, but doesn’t voi
ce it. He merely nods and directs his people as the many bodies are burned.
Across the forest, dozens of fires smoulder, eating the flesh of the dead. The clear skies fill with smoke, the starlight and moonlight blotted from the lands, and the Fangs stand and watch as their kin depart this world.
It all happens in silence. No words or prayers are spoken. Only when the flames recede do the hunters do the same, creeping back to the village up the slope to be fed and watered and seek rest.
The injured are tended, my brother and Rhoth among them. They’re too weak to make the climb to the hut assigned for such things, and so medical tools are brought down and their wounds sewn and sealed.
I hover around, watching as Rhoth’s bloodied clothes are peeled away, and the many gashes across his flesh revealed. It takes several girls to work on him, both arms and both legs suffering some major or minor cut.
My brother fares better. His shoulder is badly torn and likely to be heavily scared, but the wounds are superficial and look much worse than they are. The slightly spaced out look in his eyes suggests he’s also got a concussion from when he hit the floor. Some tonic is given to him to help with the pain and let him sleep.
He tries to push it away, half deliriously suggesting that we return to the city immediately, but the carers merely speak to him in gentle tones and coax his mouth open. Several minutes later, his eyes are shut tight and he’s snoring gently on the forest floor.
Rhoth’s surgery lasts a little while longer, the Fangs nervously meandering around and praying his wounds aren’t too deep. Yet none appear quite as worried as West, his feet pacing a little quicker than the rest, his fidgeting fingers refusing to settle.
Eventually, I manage to calm him, drawing him away beneath the shade provided by one of the huts above. We sit up against the trunk of the tree and I assure him that Rhoth’s wounds are merely to the flesh, and that the Roosters know just what they’re doing.
He rarely takes his eyes away from his adopted father, and it becomes clear just how strong their bond is. I ponder it with a mind to the past, and how, not so long ago, I thought the wilds were full of only savagery with little tenderness, violence and no love.
Eventually, as Rhoth’s wounds are sealed, and the Fangs begin to drop off to sleep, one by one, West finds his voice once more. We begin whispering in the moonlight, the smoke of the fires down the hill now fading, and he tells me more of his old home and the things he’s seen.
My education into the world continues, my once narrow-minded view now expanded beyond all possible expectation. He tells me not only of his village, but of the settlements he saw on his journey here many years ago. Of both the brutality of people and their kindness. Of how certain bands tried to take them, and others help them, during their long journey eastwards.
I learn that night that the dichotomy of these lands goes far beyond Haven, far beyond the outerlands I know. That the world is full of people, good and bad, willing to take or give, kill and save. It is a balance that I’ve seen all my life in the city, the same balance that has always existed.
The years pass, and perhaps the balance goes one way or the other. Sometimes evil will rise and dominate, and at others good will prevail and rule. But over the course of time, the balance is set straight, the passage of time a pendulum between the two, swinging one way and then the next, never to fully settle.
We talk in quiet tones that no one else can hear, West still keen to maintain his status as a mute. Each time someone stirs under a nearby tree, or looks set to wander by, his jaw clamps shut and he drops his eyes.
“Why don’t you want anyone to hear you speak?” I ask him softly.
He surveys the village before answering.
“I don’t like questions,” he whispers. “Questions need answers. If I don’t speak, no one asks me anything. Except Rhoth.”
“And me,” I say. “Why did you choose to speak to me today?”
He shrugs.
“You’re an outsider,” he informs me with no bitter edge to his words. “And you’re a girl.”
“So what about the girls in your village? Do you speak with them?”
He shifts his head left and right.
“There’s no one special?”
“No one.”
I lift my arm and lay it over his shoulder.
“Well I’m glad you spoke with me,” I say. “It makes me feel special.”
I kiss his cheek, and his skin turns ruddy with a hot blush.
He glances his eyes at me and then sends them off away across the village.
Sitting alongside him, I realise that my watch was smashed during the fight. When I check it, it says that it’s only a little past midnight. On closer inspection I see that the dials are no longer working.
West watches me, then lifts his eyes briefly to the stars.
“It’s about 4 AM,” he says.
“You can tell from the sky?”
He nods.
“My brother and I would navigate by the sun and moon and stars when we came here. It’s what people in the outerlands do. Not many have watches like you.”
“Maybe you could teach me sometime?”
He smiles like a child, innocent.
I eventually fall asleep alongside the boy from far away, both of us fading away into the blackness under the canopy of night. The mountain air is cool and refreshing, the ambient sounds of the wind and wilds peaceful. I drift off with the thought that used to always pervade my dreams: that living here up in the hills, away from the smog and sounds of the city, wouldn’t be such a bad thing at all.
When morning comes, it takes a little while for my mind to wake as the village comes alive. My eyes creak and the forms of the Fangs lift themselves from the floor. West stirs beside me, remembers where he is, and quickly launches to his feet and paces off to check on Rhoth. I follow shortly after to find my brother still at rest.
“He’ll be sleeping for a little while longer,” I’m told by a healer. “We gave him quite a strong tonic.”
In the back of my mind, there’s a lurking urgency, calling for our quick return to the city. But it’s beaten back by the tranquillity here, the beauty, the deep need in my bones to purge myself of the stifling smells of the city for a time, to detox and clear my system.
Instead, I wander. West and I continue to bond, travelling a little higher up the mountain passes, accompanied by Kervan who sets about deepening my knowledge of this place. I try my best to keep my mind from the bigger threats within it, but the old Rooster seems intent on bringing it up on regular occasions.
When we reach a higher platform, the air chilling my bones, another startling view across the wider plains is presented. I look out and, despite a desire to deny it, look as far as I can across the western lands, searching for the camps set at the base of the distant mountains.
The air today is clearer, the morning crisp, giving me a better view of what I saw the day before. And, like my brother, I note the movement of bodies, ants crawling through the woods. Hundreds of them. Thousands. A threat we cannot ignore. A threat that my grandfather foretold.
West looks at me as I stare, my eyes wide and unblinking, my body still as stone. When I finally withdraw, he remarks in wonder when I tell him just how far I can see. To him, the mountain range in the distance is a thin line on the horizon, the woods at its base a blur of green, the plains a featureless splash of colour and little more.
Yet still, what he can see down the mountain passes, and through the scruffy woods, and over the nearest of the plains, draws some memory to his mind. He looks back in time, to when he was a little boy, crossing raging rivers with his brother, evading dangers, hunting for food.
I marvel at how they made it this far. How could two boys of such an age live through the wilds for so many weeks and months? Then I recall again that his brother didn’t make it. That somewhere not too far from here, towards the western edge of the forest, a Shadow tore him from his little brother’s arms, and left the child
alone.
Alone, with no one and nothing. Until Rhoth found him.
And musing on it all, I think again of the treachery of my grandfather. These boys trekked thousands of miles through perilous lands to come here, just like so many others have before. People would see the High Tower, the beacon of hope, high above the trees as they grew close. They’d feel the pull of safety as they reached the gates, wondering just what lay beyond, what treasures and wonderful things might be hidden within.
They’d see soldiers come, and watch the gates open, and smile and hug and thank their gods that they managed to make it. And then it would all change.
The soldiers would take them to experience new types of torture, to have their minds explored and examined until all value was found. Hope would turn to ash, and their minds would be pulled apart in ways they could never imagine. Then, when their use was spent, they’d be culled, terminated, tossed into the fire and forgotten.
That is the fate that so many have shared.
But now, when they come, there’s no High Tower to be seen above the trees. No beacon to invite them forward. Those who come to spy on the city will know that it is weak. They will pass the information back to their allies, gathering in the west, and a brewing need for revenge will swell among the masses.
And perhaps, in the end, it’s a vengeance they deserve.
227
When Kervan, West and I return to the village, I find my brother mysteriously absent from his patch. It takes a few questions for a few villagers before his whereabouts is ascertained.
It’s a child who delivers the verdict. His finger lifts, higher and higher, until it points to the uppermost point of the village.
“There,” he says. “He went up there.”
Leaving West and Kervan on the ground, I scale the hundred-metre ladder to the lookout platform, thinking it foolish as I go that Zander made the climb with his left shoulder in such a state. I grumble louder with each ascending rung, until I reach the summit and find my brother in silent thought.
