The Chieftain

by V. K. Ludwig

  “What video?” I asked, pushing the question out with as much grit as I could muster, trying not to show how small this made me feel. There was only one video that fit the context.

  “I see…” His gaze crawled over me, the repulsiveness of it leaving me covered in disgust. “Rowan never told you. I guess he wanted to protect you from it but… I’m sure all this time you wondered why your Clan hates you that much. It’s on all old broadcast channels.”

  I stared at Xavier, the outlines of his face turning blurry. The truth of his words woke me like a bucket of iced water poured over my face. Ripping me out of a dream. No. Not a dream. A god damn illusion.

  If Rowan stayed with me, the traitor, many would see him as weak. Weakness, or even the appearance of it, was what got chieftains killed — along with his family. Along with his heirs.

  I hurried over and reached out for her, keeping my nerves steady. “I said what I had to say to survive. To get my daughter back.”

  He said nothing but pointed at one of the bedroom doors where I found a crib, neatly arranged against the side of the bed. She gave a sleepy sigh when I placed her on the green polka-dotted sheet, and I hoped she would fall to sleep without a fuss.

  Xavier’s eyes immediately locked with mine when I came back, the wrinkles on his forehead tense and unmoving. “Without Rowan remaining chieftain, I won’t be able to steer my Clan onto a better path. He might not know it yet, but he and I both need this alliance to stay alive.”

  His cold stare chipped away on my confidence. There would be contenders. There would be bloodshed. And nobody could tell whose blood would seep into the leafy soil.

  “And I am getting in the way of that?” I asked, knowing full well Xavier was too well-spoken to have voiced it.

  All slyness washed off his face, leaving his stare full with pain and jaw-clenching agony. “I lost too much to risk failure.”

  I slowly sat back down as not to interrupt the obvious grief clutching on his curled shoulders. “Why on earth did you help us get me out of the Districts then? This makes no sense.”

  “Sympathy, I guess.” He shrugged his shoulders and rubbed his palms across his face, ripping off his shroud of agony. “And I didn’t think you guys would make up, to be honest.”

  Inside I was shaking my head vigorously. I wouldn’t let this drive a wedge between us. Not again. But on the outside? My head sat stiffly on my shoulders, and I had to force my voice over my lips. “Do you know that —”

  “That she isn’t his?” He scoffed. “Doesn’t take more than third-grade math to figure that out. Third-grade math and some common sense, but we already talked about what’s the deal with that.”

  The wet smell of steam penetrating the stone walls crept into my nose, making me feel as if I’d drown. For a moment, I was tempted to tell him Rose would be safe if everyone knew she wasn’t an heir. Not a true one, anyway.

  But my lips were too shaky, too weak to push yet another lie through their narrow gap. My hands should have been shaking, but they lay lifeless to the left and right of the cold stew.

  Absolutely and terribly powerless. Maternal instinct made fear spread through guts. If Rowan failed, they’d come for us next.

  “I want to say this much about it,” Xavier whispered and ripped me out of my thoughts. “I have great respect for how Rowan is like a father to her, no matter where she came from. I’m not sure I would be man enough to do it. Fuck. The gods know I’m not even man enough to take care of my own…” His voice trailed off, making room for the agony from earlier to move back onto his face.

  He released a sharp breath and continued, “In any case, I want you to understand that you would always be welcome at my Clan. People here know little about the quarrels between your Clan and the Districts. And the only one who knows more is… well… he shouldn’t be a problem anymore at this point.”

  “Rowan is strong, and he did great things for our Clan,” I said, the grip of terror leaving a slur behind in my voice. “They won’t put him aside over something like this. They wouldn’t. And even if they did, I can guarantee you my husband doesn’t die easily. Things will calm down soon enough.”

  He leaned forward on his chair, folded his hands, and rested his elbows on his thighs. For a moment, I thought he might nod. Give me the reassurance I needed to make up for the certainty I lacked. Xavier lowered his head and stared up at me, more concern in his shadowed eyes than I could ever carry in my heart. He wasn’t going to nod.

  “I can’t leave him,” I said, a constant and rhythmic shake on my head. “Someone once convinced me it was for the better. For political reasons. I won’t ever let that come between us again. You said it yourself, he is more father to Rose than anyone ever could. Taking her away from him —”

  “Might save your husband’s life, and hers as well.”

  He paused for a long moment, letting the truth of his words settle down on me like a dead weight, forcing my eyes shut.

  “You don’t have to decide now,” he continued. “I just want you to know there’s a place for you once the situation escalates.”

  A suffocating wave of guilt came crashing down on me, making me gasp for air in a room full of oxygen. I had broken Rowan’s heart one time, two times, three times. I was the runaway wife and the heartbreaker and the soul crusher. What would be left of him if I broke it a fourth time?

  “I won’t leave him,” I said in my never-ever-again voice, “and he won’t let me.”

  Chapter 20

  Rowan

  “I don’t know, Rowan.” Oriel screwed the suppressor onto his gun, held out his arm, and checked the alignment. “When you asked me to come I figured I’d take care of one while you take care of the other. Now only one is left. You’re greedy, don’t you think?”

  I scratched my nail across the knife handle, letting my fingertips press deep into the furrows. “This is personal, and I don’t want you to have their blood on your hands.”

  “You’re making it sound like I never had to kill anyone before.”

  “This is different.”

  “Where’s the difference?” He checked the magazine and pushed it back in with a click. “They all bleed the same and shit themselves once it’s over.”

  I grabbed my gun from the holster, pointed it down, and handed it to him. “How many men have you killed to defend yourself? Your family? Someone innocent?”

  He stared at the barrel. If it wouldn’t have been so fucking dark already, chances were I would have seen the reflection of his eyes losing themselves in the shiny metal. No matter how high the number grew, we always kept on counting. If a man told me he didn’t, I’d call him a liar.

  He cleared his throat and blinked back into the here and now. “Enough to know that this is an easy task.”

  “Yeah,” I scoffed. “Except that it isn’t. You killed men to protect yourself and the ones you love. That’s what a husband does. A brother. A son. But going in there and killing an old, helpless man who did nothing to you? That’s what a killer does.” I took a deep breath and pushed myself up from the snow, listening to the stray sounds of laughs and dog barks in this otherwise silent village. “It’s too late for me but I sure as hell won’t let that happen to you.”

  He took my gun. Wordless.

  I leaned against the cold rock face and gazed down at Elder Lael’s hut, waiting for the flickers in the window to die.

  “I want you to keep watching Xavier.” I picked up another handful of snow, rubbing down my palms and fingers. The blood of the other guy was long gone, but the disgusting feeling on my skin remained. Like a sticky tar that wouldn’t come off. Not even something as white and pure as freshly fallen snow could wipe your hands clean from this sin.

  “Keep an eye out for any sudden movement. Shit, if he as much as holds his pecker crooked when he steps outside to take a piss, I want you to call in the others.”

  Oriel mumbled a Roger that! or perhaps a Got it!

  In any case, I couldn’t make it out bec
ause Lael’s hut went black. Shivers crept across my skin. Just one more kill and I was even with the chieftain. One more soul added to my number.

  I gave Oriel a quick no-time-to-waste nod and stepped down the rocky overlook. A skinny path led around the steamy village, bringing me to the hut unnoticed. This is way too easy…

  The hide curtain pushed to the side like silk. My nose caught a whiff of rubbed-in ammonia and crusts of piss. The smell of old age when no family was around to care.

  I expected Elder Lael in his bed, his lungs rattling away on his final breaths. Instead, he sat on an old, gnarled armchair, the cloud-filtered light of the night barely touching his saggy skin.

  Weary and dull, a sparkle reflected from his eyes, playing peek-a-boo each time he blinked a lazy blink.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said in a monotone voice as if nothing troubling could happen in the next few moments of his life. “When you didn’t come, I figured it must be because of the candle. Now the light’s out, and you’re here to murder me.”

  Adrenaline slow-pumped through my body. Worming its way through my veins. From my heart into my legs and fists. Not the one that prepared you to fight, but the one that tensed your joints and told you to flee. But there was no danger for me here, except for how his death would chip away on my soul.

  “Sometimes,” I said and walked over, planting my ass on the brick windowsill across from him. “Sometimes, the old needs to make room for the new to keep going.”

  He gave a tired laugh. “Is that what he told you?”

  “It’s what I know. It’s what happened when I became chieftain, and now we have safety for our women, peace, and a better future ahead of us.” I glanced over my shoulders, but the only movement I could detect came from the occasional snowflake drifting through the air outside the window. “Xavier wants the same for his Clan.”

  “If you believe that’s what he wants, then you haven’t been paying attention.”

  It wasn’t so much the words that iced my veins, but the certainty and benevolence in his voice. As if he had spoken in a well-meant warning, instead of a taunt. I didn’t trust Xavier, but that didn’t mean I’d go back on a deal.

  I looked straight at him. “I am just here to stick to my end of the bargain, old man. Your life in return for my wife.”

  “And the life of Elder Sigurd?”

  “Yeah,” my head sank along with my heart. “His was part of it. But I hope you’ll cooperate better than he did.”

  I pushed myself up and pulled my knife from the holster, the dull moonlight reflecting from the sharp edge. “I can cut your throat deep and fast. Your blood pressure will drop instantly, making you so dizzy you won’t even know what’s going on. There’s gonna be some pain from your nerves when I sever them, but only for a second.”

  His head lifted, and his eyes locked with mine, sending another pump of the wrong adrenaline into my body. “Or?”

  “I can break your neck,” I said, squatting down so he wouldn’t have to look up. “I’ll do it fast, and with such force, it’ll be fatal. It will sever your spinal cord, and your brain won’t feel the way the rest of your body struggles to stay alive. It’s up to you.”

  He shifted his gaze away from me and onto the tree stump next to him, which must have served as a little table. His pupils seemed to track the age lines, spiraling around and around as if there was no end to it.

  “What did Elder Sigurd choose?” he asked.

  “He took the third option and ran.” I crossed my arms in front of my chest and closed my eyes for a moment. “Everything after that was neither pretty nor fast and most definitely not painless.”

  Elder Lael pushed back into the musty cushion of his chair and gave a huff. “You are a fool, Rowan, chieftain of the Woodlands.”

  I shrugged off his words. They all said shit like that in their final moments. They call you weak. They call you stupid and a fool. But you’re the one who survived for another day, and their own weakness and foolishness put them into their graves.

  “How come?” I asked and let myself sink onto the warm dirt floor, giving the man a shot at some end-of-life glory.

  “They will never accept your wife back as one of them after what she has done,” he said, his head held stoic and high. “And once they have proof the girl isn’t your child, they will come for her. She is an abomination. She is everything the Clans are not. Your wife is a whore and a traitor, and they will come for you all. They’ll come for the girl. The mother. And then they will come for your title.”

  A familiar tick pulsed through my fingers and pounded against the knife handle — pretty hard to ignore after what he had just said. Not sure what made his words the worst choice of them all: that they sounded like a threat to my family, or that they were utterly and undeniably true.

  “There’s no proof,” I said. “Only rumors.”

  The sparkle in his eyes brightened, and he gave me a hard smirk. “There is proof.”

  My chest tightened. “What proof?”

  He didn’t answer me, and his smirk sucked in deeper into his cheeks. A booming laugh came from deep within his lungs, letting another set of shivers climb up my spine.

  I pushed myself up and grabbed him by his throat, turning his laugh into a dying gargle. “What proof?”

  Even after I let go of him and he took in a sharp breath, he said nothing but did everything to pull his mouth back into a foreboding grin.

  I pushed my hand down on his shoulder and leaned over, my forehead almost bumping his. “Who knows?”

  “I know.”

  “Well, that’s too bad,” I said, watching how the grin turned into a cramp, starting at his mouth and spreading across his face. “Nobody will harm my family. Not you. Not anybody else.”

  He looked down at himself and where my knife handle protruded from his belly, fanning his hands by his sides as if it might safe him.

  Blood oozed from the wound in beats matching his suffocating heart. He sucked in sharp breaths, but only for a few more seconds. Then I stepped behind him, wrapped one arm around his neck and placed the other between the back of his neck and shoulder.

  One hard pull-and-twist later, his body jerked until it slipped off the chair and onto the floor, the thirsty dirt soaking up the red puddle.

  After his body pissed and shit itself, I pulled my knife out of his corpse. The blade wiped near-clean on his dark robe, and I left his hut without giving it another glance.

  Cling. The sound of his death chipping away on my conscience — but not nearly as much as it should have. Each kill left a piece of me behind, making me feel an ounce less human.

  I stomped through the village and back to Oriel, who showed me the way to our hut without as much as a whisper leaving our lips. A girl waited on the inside, the scheme of her body unmoving.

  When we stepped inside, Xavier sat at the wooden table across from Darya, his eyes immediately tracking across my body for traces of blood. But I wasn’t a fucking rookie, and there were none, so he gave me a nod that said nothing at all unless you knew what went down that night.

  “Where were you?” Darya asked, jumped up from the bench and hurried over to me. She opened her arms wide, but I stepped back.

  “I’m all sweaty and nasty,” I said. “Let me wash up first.”

  Her arms dropped heavily by her side, and she stared right at me. Or perhaps even through me, her eyes so aware of the truth, it slowed my heart to a near-stop.

  Sure, we all wanted to protect our women. But none of us wanted them to know just how we did it. Problem was, she had seen me like this before, the both of us awfully aware of how my foot jittered against the floor, or how I kept on swallowing whatever nausea pushed up from my guts.

  She pointed at a mildew-covered plywood door. “There’s a hot spring out back Xavier said we can use.”

  “A compliment of our hospitality,” Xavier added. “We have a few of those across the village, and guests get to enjoy their own one.”

&nb
sp; “Where is Rose?” I asked, my eyes darting through the hut. It didn’t look much fancier than the one I had just come from, but it sure as hell smelled better. The warm scent of rabbit stew and root vegetables they must have served Darya still hung in the air, the humidity doing a great job at rubbing it deep into the pores of this home.

  “I played with her for quite some time which got her all worked up,” Darya said, folding her hands against her stomach. “She’s sleeping right over there in our bedroom. The other is for Oriel.” She pointed at two other doors across from each other.

  “Well.” Xavier clapped his hands, pushed himself up from the bench, and walked over to me. He lifted his hand for a pat on my back but skipped when I shifted away from him. “I’ll leave you guys to it. We can discuss the rest tomorrow. I’ll have the women bring you breakfast, then I can show you around our trapping grounds.”

  The moment Xavier disappeared through the embroidered curtain, I unzipped my jacket and flung it onto the floor. My sweater followed shortly after. By the time I darted for my pants, Oriel had turned on his heels.

  “Alright, I’m out,” he said, then pointed at one of the bedroom doors. “That one mine?”

  “The one to the left,” Darya said, her eyes following the inked swirls on my bare chest.

  I marched straight through the mildew-covered door, my dangling cock being the first one to inform me just how fucking cold it was.

  “You won’t like it,” Darya said and sat on the slippery flagstone floor. “It’s very, very hot.”

  The hole in the ground, tiled in dark slate, reminded me a lot of what cooking instructions used to call a rolling boil. I plunged my bare ass down and my legs into the water, ignoring how my feet ached and my skin burned.

  I took a deep breath, held my head underwater, and rubbed my hands across my body and through my hair.

  By the time I came back up, Darya held out her hand with a soap bar in it. “Wanna talk about it?”

  “No.”

  I grabbed for the bar, but she clasped her fingers shut around it and pulled away. “Please tell me you didn’t do it because of me.”