by Travis Bughi
“Krunk thinks you have too much to die for.”
The three humans came to a stop so sudden that Krunk took two more before he stopped, too. The ogre turned and looked at them, glancing from one exasperated face to the other. In his nervousness, he started to drool heavily and had to make two swipes with his wrists to clear the spit from his tusks.
“What?” he asked. “What Krunk say?”
Gavin and Takeo shared a second glance, this one joined by Nicholas. Gavin was the first to break, cracking a smile and then a chuckle before walking up and patting Krunk on one massive shoulder.
“Something profound, Krunk. Just something profound.”
They left it at that and continued walking.
“Back to what I was saying,” Nicholas pressed. “I have an idea if you’re open to it. Rather than walk blindly into the first village we see, I suggest we head for familiar ground. Not Ragnar’s lands, of course. Who knows who’s in charge there, or if there’s anything left, not to mention that’s a long walk by at least another couple of months. No, I’m suggesting another place, though they aren’t any friends of mine.”
“How is that cautious?” Gavin asked.
“To my knowledge, old Lidun Ludinson has lands around here somewhere,” Nicholas replied. “I’ve only ever visited there by sea, but I’m confident I could find his hall on foot, given time. I think he might be hospitable to us. No matter who is at war with whom, something tells me old Lidun would gladly accept Takeo and his companions for the night, just to hear how his brother met his end.”
“Kollskegg the Sturdy,” Takeo whispered in remembrance. “Lidun was one of his older brothers. His only surviving brother, I think, actually. Yes, that could work. How far away are his lands?”
“A week, maybe, I’d guess.”
“Sounds like our best option. Any objections?”
Neither Krunk nor Gavin held any, and they let Nicholas take the lead. They veered south to follow the coastline, or what they could follow of it given the plethora of mountains and villages that stood in their way. Meanwhile, Takeo took in the beauty of The North and found himself slipping into old memories.
He remembered sleeping with Emily out on this ground, her body pressed close to his as they lay beneath thick blankets to shelter from the frosty winds. Her hair splayed out on his chest, her lips on his skin, her chest rising and falling with every breath. He could almost smell the scent of her hair in the wind. If he concentrated hard enough, he could hear her voice.
You are mine, and I am yours. And I love you.
“And I love you, too,” Takeo whispered to the wind. “I always will.”
He wished she could be here to see this version of The North, the beautiful one. He’d have said something corny, yet cute, like, This place is like you: beautiful when it wants to be, harsh and brutal when it needs to be. She might have laughed, she might have smiled, she probably would have kissed him and told him she agreed. He would have drawn a deep breath of her brown, wavy hair. Why did it smell like wheat? He’d thought to ask many times but never had. He’d worried it would remind her of home, the Great Plains, and knew she didn’t care for that place.
These thoughts and more like it clouded Takeo’s mind. He thought of her happily, at first, but then his mood began to darken. He saw it happening but refused to stop it, wanting to taste that mournful sorrow once more, even if it hurt.
Pain felt better than nothing at all.
True to his word, Nicholas found Lidun Ludinson’s lands within a week. They came upon the outskirts of the village at dusk and decided to wait until morning to enter it. At a distance, the lands of Lidun Ludinson seemed a homey place of modest size, just big enough for a good one hundred people or so. There were no large mountains bordering Lidun’s village, although it butted up against a wide river, which would undoubtedly lead to the ocean—no viking lived without access to the sea—so a sturdy wall of thick pine tree timbers had been erected around the village. This must have been done some time ago though, because there were more than a few family farms set just outside the village’s walls, and Takeo raised an eyebrow at the fields of potatoes, tomatoes, and thyme being grown en masse.
“Stock for the winter?” Gavin asked of Nicholas, echoing Takeo’s curiosity.
“Only a few short months capable of growing anything,” Nicholas confirmed as they strode down the hill and out of sight. “Anyone who lives here had best take advantage of it. There are only three things you can eat in winter: crops you store, livestock you slaughter, and either of both you pillage from someone else.”
“You know, the more I see of this place, the more vikings make sense to me,” Gavin muttered aloud.
They camped a good distance away, wanting to avoid appearing like scouts of some invading army. Takeo’s mood had fully darkened by then, and he’d not spoken for the entire day. The others found reasons to sit apart from him as they made camp and directed their questions at each other in such a way that didn’t include him. This suited Takeo just fine, though, and made losing himself in mourning that much easier. When, finally, he hit bottom, he desired full solitude and left them without a word for the closest hill that would shelter him from view.
It wasn’t enough that they ignored him; he wanted to be as alone as he felt.
For a good, long, torturous hour, he was. He found a bed of grass to lie on, exposed to the cold night winds, and lounged beneath the stars. Darkness, both literally and figuratively, took over, and he wept silently at the memory of his one true love.
“Don’t blame yourself,” she’d said. “Don’t let this destroy you. I love you so much.”
“Ouch, damn,” a voice tumbled over the hill.
Takeo leapt up and drew his katana in the same motion, metal ringing as it cleared its sheath. The voice went silent as that universal warning reached the other’s ears. A darkened figure loomed over the grassy hill, and a tense moment passed between them until Takeo raised his blade.
“Hey, hey, it’s me!” Gavin shouted.
Takeo froze again, this time surprised he hadn’t noticed his friend earlier. Not only had Gavin snuck up on him, he hadn’t even realized it was Gavin at all. How deep into this tunnel of sorrow had he traveled? He sheathed his katana, and Gavin breathed a sigh of relief.
“What’s got you so jumpy?” the knight asked. “I thought you’d recognize me at least. For a moment there, I thought you were going to cut me down.”
“So did I,” Takeo replied.
Gavin closed the gap between them and took a seat on the grass. Takeo stayed standing for a bit and contemplated leaving before realizing the knight would probably just follow him. Then he took a seat, too.
“I’m sorry,” Takeo said. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“Just a warrior’s reaction to what he doesn’t know, that’s all. There’s no need to apologize. As stressful a life as we live, I’m glad you stopped yourself from charging. There are some knights in Lucifan—old ones with too many years—you can see it on their faces when they’ve been at this game for too long. They’ve been fighting ogres and thugs, patrolling darkened streets with nothing but their shield and armor between them and death for so long that they jump at shadows or wake up screaming in the night. You learn to avoid those knights because they tend to get angry for no reason. Well, it seems like no reason at the time, but then you get into your first scuffle, and things don’t go so well, and you learn what it is those old men and women are going through. We try to guard against it, that stress, in the knighthood, by building tight bonds with squad mates. Sometimes it works, sometimes it works too well, and people you depend on for support die. Then you lose yourself, you go out drinking or do something equally dumb. Some knights become jaded, leave the Order, and become mercenaries. I can only imagine it’s not much different for a samurai.”
“That’s what happened to you, isn’t it?” Takeo asked. “What was his name? Duncan?”
“Sir Duncan Macalister.” Gavin s
ighed and nodded, his head just a shifting shadow in the dark. “He was the icon of routine, the statue of integrity, and the damned pain in my side that forced me to grow a conscience. I told Emily I joined the knighthood for the pay and the angels, but I stayed because of Duncan.”
“Hence you left when he died.”
“Hence you left when Emily died.”
A silence fell between them, a pleasant one, reminiscent of their time on the Great Plains when they would go weeks without muttering a word. It was a silence that could be described in any way except for void, because it was full of so much left unsaid that the air felt heavy and the world took a step back.
Yet, Takeo had to break it.
“I appreciate this, Gavin, but it doesn’t help.” He bowed his head, glad for the darkness that hid his tear-stained cheeks. “In the end, Emily is still gone, and she takes with her the light I didn’t know I had. I’ve done this before, when I lost Okamoto. As brutal as he was, I depended on him to keep me strong. Then he died, and I was lost. When I left the samurai way of life behind me to become a ronin, although that was forced upon me, I embraced it. Now you’re here, seeking me out in the dark, and I know it’s because you’re searching for something I can’t offer. I’m sorry, Gavin, truly I am. I . . . I can’t be your Duncan.”
“No, you can’t,” Gavin replied swiftly, then turned his shadowy head toward Takeo, “but I can be yours.”
Gavin reached out a hand and placed it firmly on Takeo’s shoulder. Then the knight’s cheeks shifted, and Takeo pictured Gavin flashing that charming smile of his. Although Takeo couldn’t see it, the thought alone caused his cheeks to twitch in response, and a smile crept across the samurai’s face for the first time in a week.
Chapter 15
When they awoke in the morning, it was to the sight of thick, black smoke wafting up over the hills from the direction of the village, strong enough to reach their nostrils. Takeo and Gavin awoke first, exchanged a single glance, and then bolted up to kick Nicholas and Krunk awake.
“Up! Up!” Gavin shouted. “Get up now!”
Nicholas and Krunk grumbled, but one look at the blackened clouds above the morning sunrise was enough to make them leap to their feet. They didn’t roll up any gear or blankets, or grab food. They spared only enough time to free their weapons before charging off in the direction of Lidun’s lands.
“There wasn’t any smoke yesterday, right?” Gavin shouted.
“None that I saw,” Nicholas replied, breathing hard. “Damn, what timing!”
“Hopefully we’re not too late,” Takeo said.
The grass was moist with morning dew, making the first hill they climbed slippery. As they crested the top, their eyes and ears confirmed their suspicions.
Lidun’s village, the night before an idyllic scene of rare northern tranquility, was now in the throes of fire and war. Takeo saw three new viking ships pulled up along the riverbank just shy of the village, and a section of the village’s wall had been torn away.
A few buildings were engulfed in flames, and Takeo briefly wondered why invaders always seemed to set fire to that which they intended to steal. Perhaps the defenders did it, preferring to burn their possessions instead of surrendering them. Or maybe the invaders had done it after realizing there was nothing worth stealing in a particular building.
“Plan? We have a plan?” Gavin asked.
“Kill the other guy!” Nicholas shouted.
Krunk roared his approval.
“No, idiots,” Gavin yelled at the human and punched the ogre’s shoulder. “We can’t just go charging in there. We don’t know friend from foe. We don’t know anyone.”
“Doesn’t matter at this moment,” Takeo said, readying his katana. “Friend and foe is completely subjective right now. You assume Lidun is our ally, but for all we know, he won’t be hospitable to us. For all we know, he’s already lost this fight and had his head put on a spike. I hate to say it, Gavin, but we’re about to make a hard choice. When we charge down there, our goal won’t be to help the village; our goal will be to help whoever is winning. Either that or we walk away from this battle, here and now. These are our only options.”
Gavin swore but nodded grimly. He strapped on his shield and straightened up.
“Can we at least assume we’re on Lidun’s side until proven otherwise?”
Takeo nodded. “Let’s go find out who’s starting these fires.”
They charged down the hill, Nicholas and Krunk roaring like beasts. The grass cushioned their stamping feet, dampening the sound of their mad dash in comparison to the carnage before them.
At the bottom of the hill, when Nicholas and Krunk paused to breathe, screams and shouts from the village reached their ears. Cries of men, women, and even a child or two could be heard on the wind, at first faintly and then louder, as the four neared the town walls.
They charged for the broken section and reached it within minutes. By then, the sounds of ringing metal and burning wood had joined the frantic yells of battle, and Takeo felt an old part of him take over. Smoke and fire always had a profound effect on him. The heat, the sound, the smell filled his nostrils and his mind, flashes of days gone past when it seemed like every morning brought another battle. The only thing missing was the stench of blood, but that would come soon.
There were a few bodies scattered about the crushed section of the wall: two warriors, judging by their gear, and some villager, lying pushed against the nearest burning building, his corpse blackening in the flames. Takeo was just about to rush in when he heard shouting behind him.
Six vikings were charging towards them from the ships with weapons raised. A quick, logical deduction told Takeo that these were invaders who’d stayed behind to guard the ships.
“Looks like you’ll get your wish,” Takeo said to Gavin.
Katana in hand, the samurai charged at the invaders.
They are not men, the words swept through Takeo’s mind. They will not show you mercy. We are not men. We will not show mercy. That is not the samurai way.
“Yes, brother,” Takeo whispered.
The first viking barreled forward with a broadsword in one hand and a shield in the other, held up and out as if to slam into Takeo. The samurai would have smiled were it not for his regret at the death he was about to deal.
He sidestepped the shield before the viking could shift to compensate. Less than a heartbeat later, the katana ripped across the viking’s body, struggling along the boiled leather, but then finding a weak spot in the neck. Blood, fresh and red, sprayed into the air, and the viking’s shout turned to a gurgle as his body spun and tumbled face first into the ground, and then slid along the grass, now slick with blood as well as dew. Takeo hardly noticed for he was already moving onto the next corpse.
They were all corpses. They just didn’t know it yet.
Five more remained, and Takeo selected the closest one and stepped towards him. That man was at a dead run, bringing an axe up to decapitate Takeo on the spot, but to the samurai’s eyes, he was horribly slow. With two swipes of his katana, Takeo parried the axe and slashed open the viking at the groin, killing him as he ran past. The viking’s momentum carried him on, and like his partner, he slammed into the ground and skidded across the land, his death screams muffled by the dirt.
Gavin took the next one. He slammed full force into the viking with his shield, knocking him to the ground. His longsword found purchase a moment later, stabbing through leather to pierce the heart, killing the viking within moments.
Nicholas and Krunk squared off with their own. One of the vikings scored a solid hit on Nicholas, dodging his huge hammer and then slicing open a shallow wound in his thigh. Nicholas shouted and jumped back, and the overzealous viking charged to hold his advantage. That was a mistake, and Nicholas’ hammer collided with the viking’s head, dropping the attacker like a sack of grain and dashing his brains across the morning air.
Nearby, Krunk was swinging wildly and roaring. The last two
vikings had singled him out, likely mistaking size for prowess in combat. They were trying to close in on the ogre but were wary of the huge, wide arcs of the brute’s sword. They didn’t notice their comrades had fallen until it was too late.
Gavin took the first one from behind and tore a hole in the viking’s stomach with a sturdy thrust of his longsword. Takeo dashed to the last one, who finally realized all his friends were dead and turned to flee. A bloodied katana cut him down just before he could scream.
“Nicholas?” Gavin shouted.
“I’m fine. It’s fine.” Nicholas waved, clutching his cut leg. “I’ll cauterize it when we get to the village.”
“You’re a tough one,” Gavin replied, giving a nod of approval. “I’ll give you that.”
“I’ll lead the way,” Takeo said.
They leapt over the corpses and darted through the broken wall. Nicholas dragged behind, but this time nothing prevented them from entering the village. Gavin found a piece of burning wood, pulled out a dagger, and began to heat the metal.
“No time,” Nicholas shouted.
He ripped the burning log from Gavin’s hand and pressed the flames to his wound. In a remarkable display of willpower, he didn’t let loose anything more than a groan. The wound didn’t cauterize completely, but the flames stopped the bleeding.
“You won’t be able to run with that,” Takeo said.
“I’ll bring up the rear,” Nicholas replied, sweating and shaking. “Just don’t forget I’m back here.”
They listened for the closest sounds of metal and screams, and Takeo darted in that direction from one building to the next, following the grisly aftermath of battle. Bodies young and old, women and men, warriors and villagers, began to litter the streets and transformed the beaten dirt of the village streets into a blood-soaked marsh. Some of the flames were spreading, sending clouds of black smoke rolling down the streets. All the while, random screams echoed over the city, growing louder as Takeo and his companions neared the fighting.
At last, he turned a corner and found the source of the carnage. A group of some twenty vikings squared off against another group of equal size. They’d come to a standstill, each group forming a temporary wall only three to four paces away from the other. Of the two, the one furthest from Takeo had among them a few unarmed and unarmored individuals, while the closest, their backs turned to Takeo, were all fully grown and fully armored.
