Winter's King

by Bryce O'Connor

  The name of the Citadel drew more whispers from the crowd, if less than Raz’s byname had. Through the hum of a hundred voices, Raz made out several mentions of “High Priest” and “Talo Brahnt” and even “Lifetaker…”

  To his credit, the lieutenant seemed to keep a good head on his shoulders, and after a moment’s hesitation he nodded.

  “Move along,” he said briskly, stepping aside and waving them through. “Wetts, get out of the way.”

  The younger guardsman looked almost horrified, whipping around to look at his commander.

  “Wha’? But there’s fifteen thousand gold on his head!”

  Most unfortunately the idiot didn’t bother to keep his voice down, and Raz felt a wave of furor welling up in the crowd, a sudden, boiling hunger erupting from what had been nothing more than awe and curiosity. Almost instinctively he reached back down for Ahna’s shaft, wondering in the back of his mind how long he would last, one-handed against a mob of hungry and greedy peasants.

  “I said move, Wetts,” the lieutenant snarled, fixing the man with an angry glare.

  For a moment, Wetts looked on, stunned. Then, finally, he stepped aside, red in the face.

  “My thanks,” Brahnt said to the officer, tipping him an appreciative gesture with one hand, after which he kicked his horse between the two men and on through the gate.

  Raz was next, but he urged Gale through more slowly, keeping a subtle eye on Wetts, who stood to his right. The man’s hand had never left the hilt of his sword, and he seemed to be building himself up for something, staring at the ground with wide eyes and shaking like he were trying to draw every ounce of strength and bravery from the deepest part of his soul.

  Raz knew what the man was going to do, even if Brahnt and the lieutenant didn’t. Therefore, when Wetts ripped the blade from its sheath and leapt forward at him, howling like a madman, he almost sighed in exasperation.

  Twisting Ahna’s haft in his hands and throwing her weight forward with a quick shift of his hips, the blunt side of her heavy steel end caught the guard beneath his raised arm. The blow certainly didn’t kill him, but it launched him sideways, causing the man to careen into Gale’s muscled shoulder.

  The stallion barely seemed to notice.

  “Raz, no!” Brahnt shouted, and Raz heard the High Priest’s mare whinny as she was brought about.

  “Relax, old man,” Raz growled back calmly, letting Ahna’s weighted tip slide to the muddy ground as he threw a leg off his saddle. “I’m not gonna hurt the idiot.”

  He noted both Brahnt and al’Dor’s silence as he stepped down, feeling his claws and boots find good grip despite the slush. Moving around Ahna’s diagonal haft, he squatted down beside Wetts, who seemed to have been dazed by his collision with the horse. He was having trouble pushing himself into a sitting position, his eyes a little lost until they took in Raz’s form so close to him.

  Letting his dark red wings peek out several feet to either side of him beneath the mantle, Raz spoke.

  “Listen here, shit-for-brains.” Raz picked up the man’s sword with his good hand, lifting it out of the mud. “I’m hurt, I’m tired, and I’m out of patience when it comes to every crook and two-bit fool who thinks my head is their ticket to wealth and glory.”

  He flipped the sword over in his hand and, aiming carefully, drove half the blade into the hard earth, right between Wett’s sprawled legs, inches from his groin.

  “I’ve killed a dozen bastards for every time you’ve pissed the bed,” Raz snarled, slowly pulling the hilt of the sword sideways, careful not to show so much as a flicker of the strain it took. “I’ve cut and sliced and murdered my way through more men and women than I think your dull little mind is able to fathom. So, next time you decide you want a shot at taking me on”—there was the tinkle of cracking metal—“think better of it.”

  The iron sword broke with a pinging screech, scattering silvery shards in the muck and leaving the better part of the blade buried in the mud.

  Getting to his feet, Raz tossed the hilt of the weapon aside and turned around, fearing no reaction from Wetts as he did. The guard was practically catatonic, wide eyes on shattered metal protruding from the ground not a half a hand from the seam of his pants. As Raz took hold of the pommel, pulling himself up awkwardly back into the saddle, he wrinkled his snout at the sudden stench.

  Ironically, the man had wet himself.

  “A bit much, wouldn’t you say?” al’Dor asked him under his breath, passing his mare around Gale and reaching out to help Raz pull Ahna back across his lap.

  “Not in the least.” Raz shook his head, then tilted it over his shoulder to indicate the thick line of people and draft animals behind them. “We weren’t so far off from being the center of some very unfortunate attention. Now look at them.”

  The Priest’s brows creased, and he looked around. The palpable aura of greed Raz had felt had cooled as suddenly as it had arisen, and it must have shown in the shocked and frightened faces of the people, because al’Dor’s eyes went wide.

  “I thought you’d prefer scare tactics to my… uh… usual methods,” Raz said with a shrug as the man returned his attention to the road, both of them heeling their mounts into trots, approaching Brahnt side by side.

  There was a moment in which al’Dor looked at him thoughtfully, the sudden wind of the outside world kicking the braids of his blonde hair and beard about his face.

  Then he smiled and, without a word, reached out to clap Raz once on the back before spurring his horse into a half gallop along the cleared north road.

  IX

  “While it is generally believed that the wars of 861 and 862v.S resulted in a total forfeiture of peace between the valley towns and mountain clans, this is one of those facts sadly so often ‘lost to history.’ Indeed, while the burning of Metcaf and Harond certainly took their toll on many potential truces at the time, the treaties previously established by the Laorin Priestess Syrah Brahnt—perhaps best known for her mitigating influence on the Dragon of the North—were used as templates by the Peacekeeper over the next decade, eventually manifesting into the near-total integration of the valley and tribal cultures.”

  —THE NORTH: ANCIENT TRADITION AND CULTURE, BY AGOR KEHN

  THEY ARRIVED, like shadows of the falling snow itself, melting out of the trees in one uniform, semicircular line. Syrah saw the goat skulls of the Gähs, the reddened faces of Amreht, painted in animal blood, and the scarred cheeks and pierced noses of the Kregoan. She also saw a few white-painted foreheads of the Sefî, the heavy necklaces of human bones that adorned the necks of the Velkrin, and a scattering of other tribal markers she didn’t recognize.

  She suspected the worst, though, when a small pack broke off from the rest of the Kayle’s vanguard, wading quickly through the shin-deep snow. Syrah and her small retinue of Priests and Priestesses stood in a defensive staggering at the base of the mountain pass, below a long strip of white cloth that whipped and snapped on its birch pole in the indecisive wind of the blizzard.

  Her fears were confirmed as the mountain men grew closer, and she saw that they bore no other markings than the bones and beads entwined in their thick hair and beards.

  Sigûrth, she thought, succeeding in masking the chill that ran down her spine as the men stopped half-a-dozen paces away. Several of the ten others on either side of her didn’t fare so well at keeping their composure. She heard whispering mounting around her, and Priest Derro—the viperous coward—even took a step back in fright.

  Her job was only getting harder by the second, she realized.

  For a long time only the creak of trees and the fluctuating shriek of the storm against the mountain broke the tense silence between the two parties. When it threatened to become a full minute, Syrah decided it was time to speak.

  “Ahd, vér üd’gen,” she greeted them in their own tongue. “Garros es dü Kayle.”

  Hail, honored guests. Glory be to your king.

  She had hoped—no, expected
—the formal, honorary salute to at least draw the appropriate formal response, as was custom among the tribes. It was considered a near-unparalleled insult not to acknowledge the greeting of another man or woman, an insult reserved only for cowards and blasphemers.

  And, so, when Syrah received nothing but the glare of cold eyes from beneath wind-twisted hoods thrown up against the snow, she knew exactly where she stood.

  Regardless, after long seconds she decided to try again.

  “Ka vred es ül-karyn?” she asked them with a polite smile. “Ül-trebs nast brán dü.”

  What brings you to our mountains? My people have drawn no blood from you.

  That brought something out of the Sigûrth. One man, at the very center of the group, grabbed the individual next to him by the back of the neck and forced him abruptly to his knees. Then he squatted beside the kneeling figure, pale blue eyes never leaving Syrah’s as he murmured into his ear and reached out to pull the hood from the other’s head.

  “Lifegiver’s mercy…” Syrah heard Priest Loben gasp from somewhere to her left.

  The face beneath the hood, Syrah realized, was not that of a Sigûrth. It wasn’t even that of a tribesman. Rather, it was a gaunter, lighter face with the narrow tendencies of the valley towns. The man’s hair and beard were long and dark, beaded with wood, bone, and metal in the same fashion as those standing around him. There was, however, one great difference. A solid loop of thick, silvery steel that wound all the way around his neck, heavy and etched with patterns all too familiar to Syrah.

  They were the same etchings that decorated the staffs she and the others were currently without…

  “Laor’s mercy…” someone else gasped from behind her. “He’s a bloody Priest.”

  Before anyone could say anything more, though, the captive Priest began to speak.

  “My name,” he rasped out in a broken voice, “is Egard Rost. I was once a Priest of Laor, as you are. A man of the cloth, residing in the temple of Harond. Now I have seen the brighter light, and have abandoned my false faith in favor of a greater devotion and truth. Them of Stone crafted the world in their great hands, just as they crafted the men of the mountains from rock and ice, making them stronger than any other.”

  As Egard Rost spoke the words, Syrah could hear the shivering in his voice, an anguished sort of shake that had nothing to do with the cold.

  “I now act,” Rost continued loudly as the storm picked up, kicking the loose snow around them in gusts, “as the voice of my lord and master, the mighty Kareth Grahst, warrior beyond all others, and cousin to the Kayle himself, greatest leader of men.”

  The former Priest nearly choked on the words, but kept going. “It is my master’s first wish that your Witch”—he indicated Syrah with a hand—“be made silent, and cease to befoul the word of the Gods with her wicked tongue. It is then my master’s second wish that you all”—he gestured at the line as a whole—“take a willful knee to him, and accept servitude in exchange for your lives.”

  Syrah bristled at that.

  “‘In exchange for our lives’?” she demanded in the Common Tongue, barely keeping the fury from her voice as she continued to glare at the man called Kareth Grahst, whose eyes had still never left hers. “We meet here, beneath a flag of truce, and this brute”—she waved an angry hand at the Sigûrth—“has the gall to speak of murder?”

  There was a brief pause as Rost translated the words back to Grahst over his shoulder. The mountain man smiled cruelly, putting a big hand on the back of Rost’s neck and whispering a response in his ear.

  Still not once looking away from Syrah.

  “We do not recognize your flag, Witch,” Rost yelled over the wind. “We do not recognize your rights, your customs, and we certainly do not recognize the frail deity you so pathetically kneel before. We are men of the Stone Gods, and your beliefs mean little and less to us.”

  Syrah felt her temper boil at the words, but she forced herself to stay calm. She was not there to stoke the fires of this aggression, after all, despite the fact that every fiber of her being seemed to be urging her to do so. She’d come with a purpose, and had every intention of seeing it to the end, suffering any abuse along the way.

  With stressed determination she stepped forward, weaving her fingers into a rapid rune before pulling at the collar of her robes to drag them down her neck. There was the barest pulse of white, and when next she spoke Syrah felt her words rip painfully from her throat, magnified tenfold so as to be clear to every man and woman within a hundred yards.

  “Why have you come?” she began, speaking the mountain tongue, disregarding the irate grimaces on the Sigûrths’ faces as she ignored Grahst’s demands with obvious deliberation. Instead, she looked around at the others, the rest of the clansmen who stood in well-practiced formation around her. There were hundreds of them, possibly even as many as a half-a-thousand—she couldn’t be sure through the snow and trees.

  “I do not ask this man”—she nodded in Grahst’s direction—“why you have come, because I know his reasons. He comes with the hammer of war in hand, intent on nothing but the destruction of a people of peace. He comes desiring only blood and the spoils of battle, caring nothing of the cost of it, so long as he is satisfied. Do you think I mean my cost, though? Do you think I mean my home, my future, my life? No….” Syrah shook her head, seeking the eyes of as many of the tribesmen as she could, from every clan she could make among them. “Those learned among you will know that death does not carry the fear for me that it does for most men. My god is lord of all life, constantly tending to the circle of creation, replacing those of good heart, soul, and mind back into the world so as to continue bettering it for eternity. With my death comes only my rebirth and, so, I do not fear it.”

  Syrah could only pray the bravado in her voice hid the quiver that might have revealed the lie for what it was.

  “The cost I refer to is not one I must pay. It is not one of my faith, or my people. It is a cost you must pay, and have already begun to. I ask again: why have you come? Winter blooms in full, and yet you have left your wives to fend for themselves against the cold. The storms have come, and yet you have left your children to die, buried and forgotten beneath the snows. Why? Why, I ask you, have you abandoned your homes, deserted your lands, and forsaken your families?”

  Now she was starting to hear a murmur from the warriors. An angry one. It wasn’t the one she intended to leave them with, but it was the place she needed to start.

  Anger often left the mind open to more penetrating suggestions.

  “Is it because you chose to leave?” Syrah pressed on, still looking about. “Is it because you desired war and blood and death? Did you wake one morning suddenly so riddled with a lust for the sword that you took arms with the first war-band you came across? Were you so intent on murder that you simply had no choice but to leave your people to their fate? …I think not.”

  She paused a moment, letting her words sink into the tribesmen, smiling internally as many angry faces became steadily confused. She began to touch on the resentment she hoped—by the Lifegiver—existed amongst some of them.

  “You were not given a choice. You were not granted your right to refuse, to live life peaceably with your people. You were torn from that peace, friends. You were ripped from your beds, pulled from your homes and temples by a tyrant, a conqueror who deigned not offer any option but his sword, his army, and his goals.”

  Syrah narrowed her eyes, locking onto the gaze of one man in particular, an Amreht who stood flanked on either side by others of his clan. This man’s face was pure fury behind streaked blood paint, and Syrah wasn’t so sure it was directed at her anymore.

  She had touched a nerve. She was getting somewhere.

  “You fight. I understand that. You are men of the mountains. Men of battle and blood and of the Stone Gods. But who do you fight for? Who do you kill and die for? Is it for you? For your family, your friends? Or have you become nothing more than the edge o
f another’s sword? Do you, men of the mountains, greatest of the world’s warriors, take pride in being wielded by another, like a borrowed ax or—worse yet—a stolen one?”

  The reaction was almost palpable now, like the rumbling of a distant avalanche at the very edge of one’s hearing. Among the Amreht it was greatest—Gûlraht Baoill’s conquest of their tribe had been particularly brutal—but they weren’t the only ones appearing to suffer discontent. Many of the Kregoan had dark looks on their scarred faces, and among the Sefî and the Velkrin—newest to have been brought into the fold—disquiet glances passed from warrior to warrior. Syrah was surprised, looking for their reaction, to see that only a few of the Goatmen remained, and many of those that did were in the act of slowly slinking back into the Woods while the Sigûrth had their backs turned.

  As though reading signs of danger around them…

  Syrah could barely gain control of the victorious grin that played at her lips as she watched her practiced words, rehearsed a hundred times with Jofrey, start to take their effect. The vanguard was crumbling, just as they’d hoped.

  “We have come to you in peace, unarmed and unarmored, in the hopes of waking you into the reality of your bondage—no, your slavery. Your Kayle claims to want to take the North for his people, to seize the world for the good of the clans, and yet which of his acts prove him worthy of being the lord he claims? His burning of your homes? His butchering of your children? His conquering of your kin? You, the warriors of the mountains, have long practiced the tradition of taking prisoners as your slaves, returning them to the tribe to be distributed and put to task. Tell me, then… How is what has happened to you any different? You were challenged, beaten, and taken hostage. Yes, instead of a hoe or sewing needles you were handed your swords and axes and hammers. Yes, instead of the fields you were sent to war. And yes, instead of a steel collar”—she gestured to the metal ring around Egard Rost’s neck—“you were told to wear the symbols of your tribes with pride. But how, in the end, does it amount to anything different? How—?”