Decker could not control the fire in his chest, and the single droplet he saw hit his brother’s thumb almost drove him to madness. I will not fight you, Decker promised in silence. You are the elder brother. The right to lead is yours.
“To defeat the Wolfsbane and defend the land from southern armies, we will need to unite the clans,” their father went on. “I cannot do as such, for I have made too many enemies among them in my time. But someone must. If we are to survive, someone must. A leader of the pack. A strong and powerful leader.”
TALLOS
Tallos drew an arrow and fumbled trying to nock it when a massive thud reverberated through the ground, ending the noise of crashing branches. Their group sat petrified in the silence that followed, even the dogs—such a noise was not made by the footfalls of any prey dogs could hunt. Even Tallos, who now knew the sound had to be from something having fallen from the bluff, was gripped with the childish vision of a giant cyclops charging and slamming a mighty fist into the ground, spurring him to run. But if Northmen above were pushing boulders off the edge of the cliff, it was likely in the hopes of prodding them to run so they could be picked off by arrow fire.
“One’s gone,” shouted Jegson. Tallos wanted to backhand the boy for being so loud, but it seemed he had come to the correct conclusion before the others. “The fecking Northman’s dead!”
Indeed, it appeared there was one less dark shape clinging to the bluff above.
“Keep quiet,” Tallos said between teeth clenched in anger, “and move slowly to where he fell.”
It was a rather small Northman from the looks of him, but Tallos reasoned they came in all sizes. The body was face down, pressed into the ground, bent and smashed in unnatural angles.
“He’s dead all right,” said Jegson, quietly but with plenty of mirth. His dogs were the first to the body, sniffing hungrily, snarling and snapping at each other as if competing over the carcass.
Three dogs were two too many…perhaps three too many if they were fed the flesh of men. The accusation was never spoken aloud, but there were some who wondered how Megan’s parents kept their dogs from starving during times of famine when even their own household members fell dead from malnourishment. Watching Jegson’s dogs so eager to get to the body brought a wave of sickness to Tallos and likely to the others as well.
Tallos glanced at Lia, feeling somewhat guilty that he was looking to see if she shared in the other dogs’ excitement. Seeing her first human corpse, however, had had a much different effect on the old girl. She looked distressed, as if she knew something the others did not.
Jegson pulled his dogs back violently, unsheathed his dagger, then plunged it into the Northman’s back with a triumphant laugh. Tallos was about to scruff the boy when Lia lunged ahead of him, grabbing Jegson’s knife hand by the wrist and shaking back and forth.
“Lia, no,” Tallos shouted, running to grab her before Jegson’s dogs, still frozen from the shock of it, realized they could easily take her. Lia had never bitten a person before, but Tallos had no time to contemplate what had driven her to attack an ally.
Lia released the boy as Tallos approached, but her agitation was far from finished. She remained close to Tallos’s knees, still bristling, as Jegson’s own dogs began to circle them.
“I’m bleeding!” Jegson had an incredulous look that soon turned to outrage. “I’ll have your mut—”
He was interrupted by a familiar crashing through the trees above, followed by a heavy thud. The second body fell only paces away from them, hitting the ground legs first and folding back onto itself at the knees and waist. Crumpled like a ragdoll, the cracked head oozed blood onto the soft, green moss below.
The eyes of the body were wide open, yet the mouth or some hole in the skin was making a noise like air leaking from a bellows. Tallos was given to a moment of fear at the thought that this Northman might still be alive and able to harm them, but it was not so. This was another body, but one too small to be a raiding Northman. Tallos thought he recognized the puny man, but the skin on his face was so badly bitten by frost that its gross red and black colors masked the likeness.
Erik fell to his knees and began to heave up his dried meat and berries. He was the first of the men to recognize the bodies were those of John and Jarl, his two eldest sons.
KEETHRO
“I do not have the mind of a warrior, as I am just a woman. Perhaps you can explain to me then, why we remain huddled in our homes with winter approaching while the Dogmen and their treasures lie to the south, ripe for the taking.”
Keethro looked down at his curving forearm, its muscles rippling as he clenched his fist, knuckles cracking—a ritualistic reminder to himself of who he was. He was Keethro son of Leif, second in status among his people only to Titon, and second to none with an axe. He was the man whose affections young women had clamored for above all others in his youth. And his affections he did give to them, one after the other. If only those days had never ended, he mused.
Yet for all his raids on the Dogmen, all the bloodshed with rival clans, and all his prowess with women, it seemed he fought most of his battles within the pine walls of this bedroom.
“You still follow that big fool. He was a great man once perhaps, but he now sits in his home with his simple wife while we starve year after year.” Kilandra’s words threatened to ignite his fury, and she spoke them with full knowledge of this. Keethro let the wave of heat pass over him before speaking.
“I warn you—not for the first time—do not speak that way of Titon or his wife, even in private. It only serves to undermine my plans to one day lead our clan, united with the others, not only to raid the South but to take it for our own.” Keethro replied with the coolness of a man poised for violence. He had long since grown tired of this argument.
“Your plans? I thought I married a man of action. What good are your plans to me now? I sit here in squalor, eating the same dried old leathery goat, hoping that one day a true leader from another clan will come and unite us. I see no hope of it from any man in our own.”
This was her nature. Her emasculating words had no effect on his pride; he’d heard worse from her before. And by now her motives were transparent: to test and provoke. He was not particularly fond of her methods, but he played along nonetheless. The end result of this charade was not without its benefits.
He looked at his irate and beautiful wife. Her near thirty years and bearing of their child had seen no ill-effect on her appearance. If anything they had merely intensified her vibrant defiance that he still found so alluring. Her hair was of the deepest brown but had in it streaks of violet, artfully applied with dye from tinder berries. Her eyes were large and obstinate, the type lesser men would find challenging to gaze into for fear of the embarrassment of having been caught staring at a woman above their station. Her tight-fitting furs hugged the frame of her slender body—slender but not lacking ample curvature.
But whereas he could find no flaw in her appearance, he found, it seemed, less and less to appreciate otherwise. He had won her with his looks, his charms, and his wits, but none could ever hope to tame so wild a spirit. She stood with her shoulders tall and did not have the look of a woman claimed, nor did she dress it. It was certainly not common among Galatai women to have the inner sides of their breasts bare during winter, and though it irked him, he was not fool enough to try to shame her into covering herself. “A supple grip holds twice as strong,” his father had taught him. Keethro found this to apply to many things, women most of all. He knew she dressed as she did not only as an exercise of her own pride, but as a subtle if not subconscious test for him as well. A woman who knows her lover fears her leaving is far more inclined to do so. Keethro had seen it time and again in his youth. More often than not, he had been the one for whom the women had left.
Keethro scruffed his wife by the hair and held her in place as the two exchanged glowers. Then he kissed her forcefully.
This was the game they played. She would pro
voke him, and he would answer as expected with a certain violence. But as he held her down and took her, he could not help but be distracted by a recurring concern. He watched her hair of deepest brown, once tinged of faux blue but now of violet, as it bounced around her shoulders and down her gracile back, and wondered how it was that their daughter, in her youth, had come to have hair of such brilliant red.
LEONA
Several days had passed since she’d pleaded with her husband not to leave.
“Old and stubborn, though he is, Greyson is right. You are a wise and practical man. Do not let your loyalty to your friend force you to seek what you know is not there.”
“Leave it to you, my wife, to insult me with compliments,” Tallos snapped back at her. He was on edge. Though she did not believe him to think of Erik’s boys as sons—troublesome nephews perhaps at best—she knew they saw him as a father, a thing that must weigh heavy on his conscience. More than that, Tallos would not want to let down Erik. Erik was a silly oaf of a man, but in a village small as theirs, one was lucky to have such an honest friend. It was in vain that she attempted to sway Tallos to reason, but she was unable to stop herself from trying.
“Tallos, the boys are dead. Northmen do not take prisoners, you have said so yourself. They steal goats, rape girls, and slaughter all that lives, be it man, woman, child, or pup. They are savages, and our home could be in their path. Would you leave us unprotected?”
“The Three be damned, Leona, you try my patience. You call me wise yet think me fool enough to leave you vulnerable?” Tallos finished tying off his bundle of dried meats with a violent tug on the bindings. “The cliffs protect you east and west. To the south is Rivervale in all its lawful glory. I am headed north through the narrow canyon between the cliffs. Should the Northmen be headed south they’ll not escape my eyes nor my ears. I am not one to leave my wife in danger.” With that he gathered his remaining supplies from the kitchen table and left with Lia quick at his heels.
Leona knew his words to be spoken in truth, but the truth was twisted in a way in which to justify foolishness. It was not like them to fight. Though they had been frustrated with their inability to forge a family of their own, it had only served to strengthen their bond. They had eventually grown content with their fate, and she secretly wondered if it had not been a blessing that they should have only each other and Lia. She would never speak as such to Tallos, for she knew he wanted sons. His lack of a father made him wish to have children who he could give the strength and guidance to that he had gone without. But what Leona saw in other households did not convince her that children were the root of happiness. Too often she saw couples united in love transform into bickering adversaries as they fought over the methods and responsibilities required to rear their children. They competed against each other for their children’s affections and lived in constant fear for their safety. Worse still, they wore their greater love for their children over that of their spouse like a badge of honor—a thing Leona saw no more honor in than proudly proclaiming to have a favored child. It did not seem a joyful life, and Erik’s missing children only solidified her belief.
By contrast, their beloved dog, in all of the twelve years they’d had her, had brought them nothing but joy. Leona watched as Lia’s tail disappeared out of the door, a sinking feeling in her stomach that it would be the last time she would see it. Though it was not right to think such things. Tallos hunted alone in the Northluns every month without incident.
Leona picked up a broom and began sweeping the floor that needed no cleaning, a task that failed to distract her from her worry. She hurried out the door to see if Tallos was still in view, but his long woodsman’s strides had already put him beyond a point where she could quickly catch up to him. She did not wish to be seen slowing their departure and have others think of her to blame when their mission failed as she knew it would. She just hoped they would return safe—she hoped specifically that Tallos and Lia returned safe. The others be damned for this whole mess. Those boys had no business being in the Northluns in the first place.
In spite of her thoughts, she resolved to speak with Greyson the next day. She would beg him to send more men to help the few that went with Tallos. She might be able to convince him, as they both thought it was a foolish task, but sometimes a foolish task can be that which unites a village.
With each passing day, Leona felt worse for the way she had argued with Tallos before he’d left, wishing she could go back and simply support him in his decision. She pictured him walking along the steep scree-covered slopes of the Northluns. It was no place to be when your mind was elsewhere, concerned over petty squabbles. Forgive me and return home and unharmed, she thought, willing to endure her discomfort for as many days as necessary so long as he returned.
The Dawnstar bathed her with late-morning rays as she sat at the table in their home’s main room, storing the meats she had smoked to dry perfection. This batch would have to last them through the winter that was already threatening to take hold, so it was essential she take every precaution with its preservation. In each of the open jars, she placed a tea sock filled with iron shavings tied off with cotton twine. With clean hands, she then placed as much meat as she could inside, without disturbing the sock or breaking the meat apart. “I prefer venison jerky,” Tallos had teased her the previous year, “to venison flakes.” It had easily been their best winter together, and they had both been in good spirits. The iron sock idea Tallos had come up with had kept their meat free of mold and fungus far longer than either expected, and Leona looked forward to another winter where they would have plenty to both eat and barter.
As she secured the lid on one of the jars, she thought she saw movement out the window. Her heart raced with excitement and anxiety. He had heard her thoughts and returned. She cupped her hands to the hazy glass, peering out and straining to see. Much to her amazement, several hilltops away in the far distance, she saw the unmistakable figures of men returning home—more than had originally set out. Tallos, you brave fool, you even found Erik’s boys. I should have never doubted you.
TALLOS
Little was said after discovering the identity of the bodies fallen from the mountainside, but it was obvious their mission for rescue and vengeance had ended. All that was left was to bundle the twisted remains of the boys and make their way back.
Heads hung low, Tallos’s party retraced their steps with humble footfalls. Even the birds that would ordinarily trill at the presence of anything larger than an acorn seemed somber and silent as the procession of men made their way through the forest.
Tallos’s stomach was laden with stones of sickening regret, yet he did not feel half as bad as his friend looked. After his violent heaving and sobbing, Erik had become unthinking, his movements lifeless and mechanical. He stared ahead, not speaking to anyone—not that any tried—looking a man with no reason left to exist.
How many hours had they sat and watched the boys as they clung desperately for life, and all of it under Tallos’s command? The despair Tallos felt for the loss of the boys was eclipsed only by the guilt of being responsible for the decision that had caused it. Had they circled around to drop rocks on them as Jegson had suggested, they would have recognized and been able to rescue the youngsters before their fall. What kind of man are you? Tallos asked himself, further sickened by the self-serving wish that they had never gone searching in the first place.
With Lia picking her steps carefully and looking at her master with worry, Tallos crunched heedlessly through the deadfall. The noise they now made while walking was inconsequential. Tallos almost wished for a Northman attack on his party, an outlet through which he could vent his frustration, but he knew he would not be so lucky.
He was left instead with distasteful visions of what his life would be upon their return. All would know what happened, and everyone would whisper that it could have been avoided had Tallos not have been so cowardly. Greyson’s sneers would be insufferable, and Jegson would tell t
ales to those who would listen of how he fought Tallos’s order, how he begged and pleaded that they “charge ’round the bluff” and kill or rescue whoever clung to the rock. Yet all of that would pale in comparison to having to face Erik day in and day out. Erik, the one Tallos had known from childhood and would back him no matter the encounter, Erik who had been hurt already by his boys’ admiration of Tallos, Erik who sat patiently, obeying his command to wait for a full day while his boys clung to a mountainside, only to watch them fall to a gruesome death.
Tallos resigned himself to the notion that he, Leona, and Lia would simply have to leave. They would pack their belongings and find a new village somewhere farther south—maybe travel all the way to Rivervale. But even his thoughts of Leona were tainted with regret and self-reproach. The way in which he’d left her was unacceptable. He could not recall another time when he’d departed without saying his farewells and with a promise of his safe return. It was a mistake I shall not repeat. This I promise you, Leona. He estimated it would be another night before they reached the village, one more agonizing night in the hell of the Northluns, a place he vowed he’d never return.
His thoughts of Leona were interrupted as several of his party stopped walking, the rest soon following suit. When they were all motionless, he could hear what had caused their alarm. Encroaching sounds: the plodding stride of someone’s careless approach.
The Axe and the Throne (Bounds of Redemption Book 1) Page 3
