He had avoided it as long as he could, and he had no choice but to head toward Martherus. Rael breathed a heavy sigh of relief when he had passed through a small village in the night and suddenly realized that he had just passed whatever called to him. He backtracked to a farm just a few miles out of the village, and as it was late, all was quiet.
He thought of Demon, storming into his own home and rending flesh as fire burned down the house. He could do such a thing. His failures over the years had frustrated him so much, that for just a moment, he thought he could simply rip through the home and take whatever it was by force. It was likely a person, a child even, for he had felt this before. It is not like the child belongs to his parents anyway; they are Westerners to be sure, not Dahken.
Instead, Rael turned and rode until he found the next farm and a barn in which he could sleep.
Rael decides to rest when he returns, as he has traveled for months. Though the barn is somewhat stuffy, it shields him from the summer son, and he finds himself dozing in and out before long. He sleeps late into the next day when he is awoken by one of the farmer’s hands as he goes about his chores. Rael’s stomach growls, and he suddenly longs for a real meal instead of dried berries, nuts and jerky. Leaving his armor and sword behind in the barn, Rael ventures toward the farmhouse in his tunic to find the farmer, a Westerner very little different than the one he spoke to yesterday. So close to his quarry, the burning in his blood has subsided somewhat, and he thinks he might need some time to reconsider his approach regarding the Dahken boy.
“I would be happy to work for a meal,” Rael says to the man, finding him in a field with a shovel in hand.
“Can you dig a ditch?” the farmer asks, and Rael nods. “Help yourself to anything that’s left on the table, and I’ll gladly use your help back here when you’re done.”
Manual labor feels good to Rael. There is something simple, honest about just moving dirt out of a trench meant to irrigate crops. He spends most of the hot summer day doing this or whatever else the farmer asked of him, and after supping with the man’s family, Rael returns to his rented barn with a satisfying soreness in his muscles that comes only from an honest day’s work. He even feels blisters forming on his palms, for the tools of farming wear on his skin differently from the tools of fighting. He finds himself falling into sleep quickly, but it fights him as he tosses and turns all night in a bed of loose hay. Something bothers him, as if something incredibly important has somehow slipped from his mind.
Rael wakes early to the sounds of crowing roosters and mooing cows, and he jumps to his feet with every nerve feeling as if it has been struck by lightning. He collects his belongings as quickly as he can move and straps on his armor with shaking hands. He opens the barn door and leads the stallion outside. As Rael mounts the animal, the farmer approaches with a pitchfork in hand.
“You’re leaving then?” the Westerner asks.
“I must go,” Rael replies. He begins to kick his horse into motion, but then stops to ask, “Do I owe you any debt?”
“Not at all. If anything, you’ve overpaid me with gold and labor.”
“Then, I thank you and bid you farewell.”
No sooner are the words out of his mouth before Rael speeds his horse south. He gallops away from the farm and across the road to head across country. He doesn’t know where he is headed, except that the boy has left his parent’s farm. Rael chases the boy south, and it feels as if his quarry is just beyond the reach of his sigh. He grits his teeth in disgust that he did not pay more attention to the boy’s whereabouts.
24.
Rael rides into the Jek village, and he swears that it has grown even more while he has been away. Small houses have sprouted outside of the stockade wall on the long downward slope to the foot of the mountains. The huge timber doors are open, as they usually are at this time of day, and Rael rides through them with no words from those upon the wall. He takes his black stallion to the stables, which are mostly empty, and selects a stall for the animal. Rael then sets out on foot for his home, a sack heavily laden with gold in each of his hands.
When he arrives, he stares with silent consternation at the door that is ajar, and as he pushes it open, he sees that a thick layer of dust covers everything. The door has been open for some time, left to swing back and forth in the breeze, and accumulated snow covers the threshold and floor several feet into the house. He sees no sign that Rika or Werrin have been here in some time, not even footprints in the dust, and for a moment, Rael remembers when he came home to the same and Kryjek had become chief of the Jeks. His large mirror is still mounted to the wall, but the glass lays on the floor, shattered and covered with dust. The bones of his kill, the great ice bear from so many lifetimes ago, have fallen into a disorderly heap against one wall, thick dust covering them as well.
His heavy sacks of gold still in hand, Rael leaves his empty home and trudges through the snowy village, ignoring or even ignorant to the glances and whispers of the Northmen around him. Assuming Djarl has not improved his place within the clan, his home is but a short walk through the crisp air from Rael’s. As he passes a small cluster of newer cottages, he spots a blond haired woman just outside the Northman’s home. Though her back is turned to him as she works to clear a path in the snow from Djarl’s door to the village’s main road, Rael does not mistake who she is for her figure.
As he nears her, he sees Werrin sitting in the snow, pushing it together into piles which he packs down as if he intends to build some edifice or another. Even seated, Rael is amazed at how much the boy has grown. His red hair hangs down to his shoulders and sometimes falls to cover his freckled face, much to the boy’s annoyance. He pushes it back only to have it fall again, first just one or two strands and then a thick layer. Werrin looks up to see the Dahken standing on the village path and says, “Ma? There’s a man.”
Ricka turns to behold her husband, and a gamut of emotions cross her beautiful face in a matter of seconds, from shock to anger to guilt. It ends as she adopts a cold, hard demeanor and says, “Go inside, Werrin.”
The boy climbs to his feet, and his head is well past his mother’s waist. “Isn’t that -?”
“I said go inside,” she repeats, and Werrin adopts a slightly sullen expression as he does what he’s told. Ricka half turns to watch him go, and once the door shuts behind him, she turns back to the Dahken. “Why come back?”
“I do not understand,” Rael replies, bewildered. “I told you I would always come back to you, to Werrin.”
“There is nothing for you here. You should have stayed away,” Ricka says coldly, and she turns to tread softly toward the cottage.
Rael almost leaps forward down the freshly cleared path to gently, but firmly, take Ricka’s arm just as she reaches the door. She wheels around to face him and spits, “Go away. We’re happy, and you’ll only ruin it.”
“Happy? What?” asks Rael in shock, and his world seems to spin around his head.
The door to the small house open to reveal Djarl, and Ricka uses the momentary disruption to yank her arm back from the Dahken. She storms away, past Djarl into the house, and Rael gets a momentary glance of his son looking on from behind the Northman before his mother picks him up and carries him further into the home. Djarl quietly steps outside, pulling the door shut behind him as he does so.
“I’m sorry it had to be this way,” the Northman says, but something in his tone betrays him.
“What way?” Rael asks, though understanding begins to dawn on him. “Thank you for looking after my wife and son, but I will take them home now.”
He tries to step around the Northman but finds the man moves to bar his passage. Djarl replies, “They don’t belong to you. It was selfish of you to think that a Northwoman should be so bound to a husband who is always absent. The air may be cold and thin in the North, but her blood runs hot and thick. She is not you wife, nor is Werrin your son.”
Rael looks long and hard into Djarl’s face and sees the
grim determination there. He looks closely, in fact, at the man’s red hair that falls straight and scraggily almost to his waist. He sees the hawk shaped nose and the freckles that start on its side, then make their way to his cheeks. Rael sees the thin eyebrows over green eyes, and for just a moment, he sees Werrin’s face almost as if it is superimposed over Djarl’s.
Rael reels with the shock of the revelation, even though he somehow knew it all along. How could he have not seen the plain facts just in front of him, ignoring the fact that in all his readings of the Dahken library in Sanctum, he had never read of a Dahken having a child? He knows that Djarl speaks the truth, and unreasoning anger builds in his pit of his stomach. It invades his heart and then flows through his arteries to every part of his body.
Sneering, Rael suddenly pushes past the Northman and throws open the door leading into the cottage. It is small inside, though slightly larger than his own, and two doorways lead off to other rooms. A stone fireplace is built into the western wall, and a cheerful blaze burns there. Warm animal skins are laid across the floor to soften the hardness and cold of it, and two well-made wooden chairs, both designed to rock back and forth, with tufted pillows in their seats sit flanking a small pine table to face the fireplace. Images from his childhood home flash into his mind, accompanied with a warm familiarity, and then Rael thinks of his cold, almost ascetic stone home only a few hundred feet away.
Upon his entry, Ricka turns quickly to face him. She then kneels to Werrin and says, “Go to your room, and wait for me.” The boy seems reluctant, but with his mother’s urging hand on his shoulder, he does as he is told. She then stands and storms over to Rael so that their faces are mere inches apart. “Get out of my house,” she spits.
“Only when you come with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you!” she screams as rage begins to fill her face.
“You are my wife!” Rael shouts back.
“I’m your nothing! Now, get out!”
“I am not leaving without you and my son!” shouts Rael, and he takes a hard grip on her upper arm.
“Let go of my wife,” growls Djarl from behind Rael’s back. The Dahken turns to see the wide framed Northman standing there, dagger in hand. “You have no claim to Ricka or Werrin. He’s my son, not yours. Let her go and get out.”
Rael is upon the Northman before he knows what he is doing, as red rage fills his vision. He grabs Djarl’s wrist with one hand while hurling a clenched fist at his face. The two men grapple and wrestle for a moment, their combined masses knocking over one of the rocking chairs. They then destroy it as they fall upon it, their weight splintering it into a hundred pieces. Djarl’s frame holds more strength than does Rael’s, but he is no warrior. A carpenter, he doesn’t have the experience in fighting that Rael does.
“Stop it! Stop it both of you!” Ricka screams at them.
They continue to fight heedless of her screams, as each is a man fighting for his family, and they roll about the floor as each tries to gain an advantage. Rael catches just a glimpse of Ricka scooping their son into her arms as she flees out the door. He finds himself on top of his adversary, for his steel armor gives him a noticeable advantage in weight and protection, but Djarl fights with the strength of a hot blooded Northman. He finds a well of will somewhere deep within him and somehow turns the tables, transposing their positions. As he does so, Rael slams his right fist into the inside of Djarl’s elbow, causing the arm to bend inward, and with his left hand he guides the dagger toward the Northman…
Rael hefts the heavy form of the Northman so that he rolls to the right and onto his back. Djarl’s face shows amazement as he tries to move his mouth to speak, as he tries to draw in breath that will not come. Rael looks down to see the thickest, darkest blood he has ever seen covering his left hand and a good deal of his hauberk, and suddenly it all seems very wrong. He wanted to kill this man, as if the action would win him back his wife and son, but they were never his. Rael leans over the dying Northman as if he can somehow make it all right, and he wants to apologize in some way. A thousand words come to his mind, but they will not arrange themselves in the right order.
As Djarl’s last breath leaves his body and the light fades from his eyes, two huge Northmen grab Rael’s arms, yanking and dragging him from the cottage. As they pull him toward the chief’s hall, the wails of a mother and son fill the village air.
25.
The two burly Northmen pull Rael outside into the cold and snow, and he does nothing to fight them. They do not go far, perhaps only a hundred feet to another small wooden building from the top of which smoke rises. He knows he has never seen this building before, and the thought is confirmed when they push open the door. A cellblock as if from a dungeon or jail meets his eyes, but rather than steel or iron bars, the cells are made from saplings posted into the hard ground and wedged into notches in the ceiling. An old, fat Northmen sits in a chair, leaning against one wall as a warm fire rages near him. He looks groggy, as if he were dozing when the trio enters the warmth of the small building, and his chair thuds forward as he stands. An unsheathed sword leans against the wall near his chair, reflecting the dancing flames.
“What is it?” he asks gruffly from behind a scraggly gray beard, stained downward from the corners of his mouth from some foul smelling ale or mead.
“He murdered Djarl. He dies in the morning,” replies one.
“Toss him in one over there, away from the fire,” the gaoler orders, pointing with a dagger Rael hadn’t noticed before. A large chunk of cooked greasy meat sits impaled on the weapon’s point.
At the end of the row is an empty cell, and the Northmen take the gaoler’s command rather literally, throwing Rael into it so that the Dahken would have brained his head on the solid wall opposite the cell door if he hadn’t put his hands out in time. His armor clangs as he falls to the cold and solid dirt floor. They laugh as one closes the cell’s door of fitted planks, and he hears something sliding into place, then clicking on the other side of it. As the Northmen slap each other on the back and exit the prison, the gaoler sits his fat ass back into his chair to gnaw at the meat on his dagger.
Rael looks about his cell, and sees little to indicate that he can escape. He pushes up against the door and finds it to be disappointingly solid. He moves to the side of his cell, where he can see through the sapling bars. It is gloomy, but he can make out the flickering light of the gaoler’s fire. He takes ahold of a skinny tree in each hand and pulls apart with all of his strength. They bend slightly, perhaps just enough that he could push his head between them, only to have it trapped there when they return to their normal positions if he even tried.
The gaoler laughs tauntingly at him from his place near the fire. “They may not be steel, but their strength was tried against mean twice your size!”
Rael turns his back to the fat man, realizing just how cold this side of the prison is. To be sure some of the fire’s ambient heat remained in the room, for the cells couldn’t be more than ten feet in each direction, but most of it no doubt rises through the hole in the roof with the smoke. Looking the other direction, Rael sees that the firelight does not penetrate more than a foot into the last cell, and he has the distinct feeling that something watches him from the darkness. He sits on the cold dirt floor and leans his back against the bars facing the fire, so that he can stare into the darkness before him. After a short while, he wakes from a doze due to the rumbling snores of the gaoler.
“Are you going to stay awake?” asks a withered voice from deep in the gloom.
“Why should I bother?” Rael asks back, keeping his voice low.
“Because I wish to talk.” The voice is undoubtedly that of a woman’s, though gravelly, and it wavers with age.
“I have no wish to talk to you or anyone. I need only wait until the morning brings my death.”
“Why should you wish to wait for that? Why do you no longer care to live?” she asks.
“I have nothing for which to live
.”
A shuffling disturbs the darkness beyond as someone approaches the bars separating their two cells. Rael hears a hard step followed by the sound of something dragging on the hard packed dirt, and that followed by another step. He sees the aged hands as they slip around the sapling bars before he sees anything else, and yellowish skin stretches tightly over their bones. A face appears in the gloom beyond the bars, and it is that of an ancient Tigolean woman, though hag seems to be a more appropriate term. Her silky near black hair had long thinned from her scalp and turned gray. Her ears and nose seem overly large and pointed, as if those parts of her continued to grow as she aged. She wears old wool rags that are filthy with shit or other foul smelling stains and rotting with age. Based on her uneven stance, Rael suspects that she is hobbled, either from birth or some long ago injury, but it is her one milky white eye that draws his attention the most.
“You!” Rael blurts
“Shhhhhhhh you fool!” she screams in a whisper. “Do you wish to wake him?”
“But, it is you?” he asks coming forward to bring his face near hers, wrapping his hands around the same bars as hers are wrapped. “You are the witch who saved me in the swamps of Dulkur.”
“But that would make me ancient beyond mortal years, would it not?” she asks with a crooked grin, and the odor of rancid meat on her breath almost knocks Rael over.
“You are not the only ancient one here, witch. What do you here now?”
“I am here to save your life a third time,” she answers.
“Third? I think you are mistaken, witch. You have saved me once.”
“No,” she disagrees, “this would be the third. The swamps of Dulkur was second. The first was when I set the steel clad demon upon his task, for he was ready to end his own life. I told him he yet had purpose.”
Blood Loss: The Chronicle of Rael Page 18
