Brotherhood Saga 03: Death

by Kody Boye

  With a shake of his head, Nova stood and turned to make his way back to the bed, but stopped midstride. “Father,” he said.

  “What is it, Nova?”

  “You don’t…”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Think I’m weak, do you?”

  “You’re a lot stronger than you’ve led yourself to believe,” Ketrak said, stepping up behind him and clasping a hand across his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Nova. Things will work out. They always do.”

  They always do.

  Nova closed his eyes.

  If that were the honest truth, then he might have hope for his future.

  “Nova,” Katarina said. “Can we talk about something?”

  After rounding the courtyard and the field that lay beyond it, they crossed over into the territory where the pond and what eventually led out into the harbor was. Eyes cast toward the horizon, hands limp at his sides, Nova turned his attention to his wife just in time to see a small group of pages wander into the castle from the training grounds, all of which appeared much too young to have been placed within a war-like situation.

  When his wife did not press the matter further, Nova reached back, took her hand, then led her out and onto the dock that spanned the small lake. There, at the end, they stood looking out at the pond and the distant river beyond it, voices silent but hearts all the louder.

  What could she want to talk about? he thought, all the more nervous about the innate possibility that something could be wrong.

  Instead of responding directly, he set his arm across her shoulders, then pulled her against his side, sighing when a brief wind flowed from the distant north and disrupted the hair on their heads.

  “We can talk about anything,” he finally said.

  “I know this might be a bad time to bring it up,” Katarina sighed, lacing her hands together before her and bowing her head to look at the planks beneath their feet. “But… well…”

  “What is it, honey?”

  “I’ve been thinking about this for the past little while. Well, I should say, the last long while, if you want me to be completely honest.”

  “All right.”

  “You’ve been gone for such a long time, Nova. I… I know it was for a good reason, because what you did for that boy… man, I should say… that was something remarkable. Not many people are willing to help a complete stranger in that way, especially not someone who may not be real.”

  What is she getting at?

  “Anyway,” Katarina continued, lacing her arm around his waist and turning so the two of them stood chest-to-chest. “I’m sure you’ve been thinking about this for a while to, but… I want to start a family.”

  A family?

  Immediately, the image of his wife holding a baby in her arms assaulted his vision, erasing any form of the concrete world in favor of a façade of golden light that enshrouded everything within its hues.

  In her arms, wrapped tightly in a blue blanket and resting against her chest, was the child he knew was already a boy.

  Look at him, Katarina’s vision-self said. Our son.

  Nova blinked.

  The world returned to its normal hue.

  Almost unable to comprehend the fact that he’d just experienced a flashback of a vision that had happened three years ago, he wrapped his arms around his wife, closed his eyes, then bowed his face into her hair, where he inhaled the faint scent of shampoo and sweat that exuded off of her scalp and tried his hardest not to let the tears burn down his eyes.

  The thought that occurred to him shortly thereafter was enough to shake his entire core.

  Could they really raise a child in the midst of all this tragedy, all this war?

  Who says we can’t?

  The government, the law, the fact that in possibly a few months’ time he would be in the front lines awaiting not only the next wave of war, but the arrival of his first-born—all realities led to the conclusion that even trying to conceive a baby was a dangerous and emotionally-hazardous idea, but to actually have one in light of everything that had recently happened?

  She wants a family, he thought, tightening his hold around her body. But what do I want?

  He, too, desired something to call his own. A wife, a son, a father-in-law that would one day smile upon his first grandchild and sing of folklore that could easily be established within the history of mankind—these were the things that men dreamed of when they transitioned from boyhood and became the people they were after the eve of their sixteenth birthday, the things that led many to court young women to win not only their affections, but their hands. These things, as simple and magical as they were, came not without consequence, and for that, he could not truly say that he wanted to risk his life and heart for something that could very easily go wrong.

  “Nova?” Katarina asked.

  “I’m not sure what to say,” he replied, awestruck and a bit dumbfounded by the fact that he would soon have to answer.

  “You don’t know what to say?” she laughed. “Nova, why—“

  “There’s just so much going on right now. I don’t know—“

  “You don’t know what, Nova? That you’ve lost everything you could have possibly imagined?”

  “I didn’t lose you,” he whispered.

  “That’s not the point,” Katarina replied, breaking apart from him and walking backward, toward the end of the dock and spreading her arms out and about her. “The point is, Nova, that you deserve a life more than anything else in the world.”

  “I’ve had a life.”

  “You’ve had a journey!” Katarina cried. “You haven’t lived at all! You were gone no more than a month after we were married!”

  “You know why I had to go,” he said, stepping forward. “Please, Katarina, don’t—“

  “Don’t what, Nova? Say how I feel? Tell you what you’ve been missing, because I can tell you right now that you’ve missed a lot more than you could have ever possibly imagined.”

  “What have I missed?”

  “The letters I wrote but had no way to send, the things I wanted to tell you when I was sad and depressed and lonely, the fact that I planted each and every rosebush along the path that led to our home the first summer you were gone. You don’t know,” she said, shaking her head, continuing her pursuit back and near the edge of the dock. “You don’t know anything.”

  “You’re going to fall off if you’re not careful.”

  “Getting a little wet won’t amount to all the pain I’ve gone through these past five years.”

  “I know how you must feel,” Nova said, stepping forward and reaching out to take his wife’s hands. “I can’t say I know exactly how you feel, because trust me, if I did, I’d have more than enough pain for both of us, but there were days I cried because I couldn’t be with you, Katarina. I’d lay awake at night thinking about what all you’d done during the day, what you’d accomplish, the life you were living that I couldn’t be a part of. I thought of everything, because out there—on the ocean, in that godforsaken frozen land, on that damned island and on the front lines—I had all the time in the world to think about what you were doing, and let me tell you, you can’t get much more time than that.”

  “Nova—“

  “I love you more than anything else in the world. I would die for you, I would give you everything you could ever possibly imagine, but I don’t know if I can give you a family—not now, not with so much going on.”

  “But why? Why would you deny us such happiness?”

  “Because I don’t want to leave you behind!” he cried, thrusting his hands in the air. “I don’t want you to be pregnant with our child while I’m gone doing god knows what.”

  “Odin’s gone, Nova.”

  “That doesn’t mean I won’t be drafted if they come back.”

  Katarina said nothing. Instead, she turned to look at the lake that lay no more than a foot away, then bowed her head.

  When he heard her tears drop into the water,
Nova stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her waist.

  “You don’t know how much I love you,” Nova whispered.

  “Don’t worry,” Katarina whispered back. “I do.”

  Their hands touched.

  His heart began to bleed.

  Neither of them said a word as they made their way from the dock and to the castle. Heads bowed, hands in their pockets, lips so tightly pursed they could have easily been sewn shut by the cosmic force of an old hag’s needle—it seemed to Nova in the brief moments that he looked up and at his wife’s face that something terribly wrong had transpired, something so terrible that it could end their marriage altogether.

  There, his conscience whispered, the single word a dull stone meant only to be thrown at the back of someone’s head. Look what you’ve done.

  A total eclipse of the earth, the moon, the sun, the very universe in which they lived and the ground they stood—all seemed to align at the exact perfect moment to make his life a living hell.

  At the junction of the road—where the path diverged and led to the front of the castle and the end of the royal grounds—Nova raised his head and looked his wife straight in the eyes for the first time since leaving the pond.

  “Honey,” he said, wanting to reach out and touch her, but unsure if he should.

  “Yes?” she asked, matter-of-factly and with little emotion on her face.

  “I…” He paused. A glimmer of light twinkling from the castle’s higher towers caught his attention for but a moment before he returned his attention to his wife. “You… at least understand what I was getting at, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “Then you’re not mad at me?”

  “I would say disappointed more than anything else,” she shrugged, crossing her arms over her breasts and locking one ankle behind the other. “Let me tell you something before I go any further, Nova—I didn’t say the things I said because I feel some sort of obligation to have your children. I know you want a family, because God knows I’ve been wanting one for the last few years myself, but I can’t force anything on you that you don’t want, especially if you don’t agree with whatever it is I’m thinking of.”

  “You know I couldn’t leave you alone with a baby.”

  “I know. You’re too good and stubborn to leave a woman home with a child that needs more than one parent tending to it.

  Do I tell her?

  Did he really, truly want to confess that he felt as though something bad were about to happen—that regardless of the fact that he was now home and sleeping at night with his arms around the woman he loved, there seemed to be a cloud of dread hovering over his life, constantly showering him with drops of unease and striking him with blows of fury? It was any wonder how he’d managed to maintain such control over the past few weeks, especially with Miko’s death and Odin’s sudden and irrational disappearance, so to want to cave into his weaker inhibitions at that moment seemed perfectly reasonable and almost necessary.

  A thought occurred to him shortly after he looked into his wife’s eyes and saw what appeared to be a twinkle of unease, a thought so horrible that he wanted to scream at the very idea of it.

  Had he cried since the whole ordeal had begun?

  It’s not good to keep things bottled up, his father had once said, during a time in which his temper had begun to overwhelm his life and control every aspect of him. Scream, my son, for the things that pain you so, but never raise your hand to strike another during a moment of weakness.

  “Nova?” Katarina said.

  “Yes?” he asked, blinking, clearing his eyes of the vision of the past to look directly into his wife’s face.

  “I want you to teach me how to use a sword.”

  What?

  Had he heard correctly?

  “You’re joking,” he laughed, unsure whether or not his ears had deceived him. “You have to be.”

  “No, hon. I’m not.”

  “Why do you—“

  “If worse comes to worst and something happens, how am I supposed to defend myself if I have no idea how to do it?”

  “You’re a woman. You shouldn’t be wielding a sword.”

  “Who says” Katarina asked. “Some men, the law, the royal court or even the king himself? You should know better than anyone else that just because someone thinks someone is weaker than them doesn’t mean it’s true. What about Carmen? Is she not a woman?”

  “Yes, but—“

  “But what, Nova?”

  “She’s a Dwarf.”

  “That makes no difference. She knows how to fight, how to defend herself and kill someone who’s trying to kill her. What would happen if the castle was sieged and you weren’t there to protect me? Or if you died? What would I do if some monstrosity ran toward me and I didn’t know how to defend myself? Run?”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “Whether it will or it won’t, I don’t care. I’m not going to be one of those women who run around screaming and waiting for a man to save them. I want to learn how to fight, and if you won’t help me, then I’ll find someone who will.”

  A breath of air escaped Nova’s chest.

  What do I say?

  Common rationale led him to believe that it would be best for his wife to remain ignorant of such things—for her to not know how to use a sword just as well as she could a simple cutting blade—as in his heart and mind he believed that women need not worry for such things because they should always have no need for fear, as there would be a man to protect them. However, his better intuition told him that even if he didn’t want his wife to be pressed into any sort of danger, it might be best if she knew how to defend herself.

  If the castle were sieged and he killed in battle, Katarina could easily be taken hostage.

  God knows what brutes will do.

  A woman caged, a tortured, a gagged, bound and stripped naked for her pain and their pleasure—that could be Katarina had he not the inclination to show his wife how to fight.

  With a slow, deep breath in, then out of his chest, he stepped forward, wrapped his hands around his wife’s upper arms, then bowed his head until their foreheads touched.

  “So,” Katarina whispered, reaching up to brace her hands along both sides of his ribcage. “Will you teach me?”

  “You’re sure about this?” he whispered back.

  “I’m sure.”

  “If that’s what you want, I’ll do my damndest to teach you how to fight like the best of them.”

  Later that afternoon, after the sun fell and the pages retreated for their afternoon lessons, Katarina stood on the sparring grounds holding a wooden sword and buckler. Hands braced at her hips, his weight guiding her stance to bend her knees and allow her momentum, Nova waited a to ensure that she would not falter, then walked around her and a fair distance away before nodding for her to come forward.

  “Keep your arms bent,” he said, flexing his forearm to demonstrate his point. “Shield to the chest, sword at your side. You don’t want them stuck out straight for someone to cut them off.”

  “I figured as much,” Katarina laughed, stepping forward and waving her sword out in front of her. “Come at me!”

  “Any good warrior should know that you never attack first.”

  “Why? Not willing to make the first move?”

  “It’s dangerous.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says everyone who knows anything about swordfights.”

  “One of us is going to have to make the first move,” Katarina said. “So I guess that’s going to be me!”

  The woman raised her sword, screamed, then threw herself forward, weapon flying through the air and sailing right toward Nova’s face.

  He ducked.

  The sword skirted down the edge of his spine.

  He barely had time to roll out of the way before the wooden tip of the weapon slammed into the ground.

  She’s faster than I thought, he mused, panting, almost unable to believe
the strength and dexterity his wife had shown.

  He knew nothing of her physical past, whether or not she could raise her hands in a fight or throw something at a target and hit it perfectly, for she had never once claimed to have hit another person or throw a knife and hit a target’s perfect bulls-eye. In that regard, they were two complete strangers, a man and a woman passing each other in the street without so much as a second glance, but that seemed not to matter. In that great, precise moment—when Katarina raised her sword and once more slammed it onto his shield—she could have been the grand master of sword fighting in the entire western world.

  “Come on!” she cried, throwing her sword forward and swinging her buckler out in front of her. “What’re you waiting for?”

  “Nothing,” he replied.

  What he wanted to say, regardless of the fact that his nerves were ablaze, was that he was waiting for something. A simple slip of the wrist, a misplaced step, a lack of coordination or a false hold on a needed stance—anything could alert him to a weakness he could easily exploit.

  Come on, he thought. Do something.

  How could he expect his wife to fail, especially in a situation where he was training her how to fight?

  “You’re slipping,” she said, knocking him out of his reverie just in time for him to raise his shield and block a thrust. “How do you expect to win if you can’t stay focused?”

  “Who said I was trying to win?” he grinned.

  In response, Katarina brought the hilt of her sword down onto his buckler as hard as she could.

  A metallic echo rang along the inner edges of the shield.

  The sound stabbed into Nova’s ears.

  He grimaced.

  What felt like thousands upon thoughts of flies seemed to buzz within his head.

  “You thought I couldn’t do this?” she laughed, raising her shield to block one of his own returning blows. “What do you think of me now, husband?”

  “This makes me love you even more,” he laughed.

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  Nova turned his head.