King of the Rising

by Kacen Callender

  Only Kjerstin’s words give me pause. “Let me come with you,” she says.

  “That,” Geir says, “would be unwise.”

  Kjerstin doesn’t falter. “Why is that?”

  “The mission would be dangerous for an untrained islander like yourself,” Geir says.

  “I’m the leader of the scouts,” she reminds him.

  Malthe agrees she should stay. “You’d be in a better position to handle your scouts from here on Hans Lollik Helle.”

  “You’ll only be in the way, child,” Olina says.

  But Kjerstin is unmoving. “I need to meet with the scouts of the northern islands to pass on the messages my predecessor wasn’t able to,” she says. “The northern scouts need to be prepared to go south to gather information on the kongelig and the Fjern before we strike.”

  This isn’t a good enough reason for Kjerstin to risk her life and come north. “It’ll be easier for me to pass the messages on myself,” I say.

  “They need to see that they still have a leader who gives them their orders. Not just the leader of the royal island, too distracted to pay them the proper attention they deserve. And not the commander of the guards,” Kjerstin adds before Malthe can interrupt. “They’ll only feel they’re placed below the fighting guards in importance, when in truth they are our most powerful asset. It needs to be me. I was made head of the scouts for a reason, was I not?”

  Kjerstin is uninterested in our opinions on the matter. She wouldn’t care if I tried to order her to stay. She would simply ignore me and board the ship headed north. And though my first reaction was to think she’d be taking an unnecessary risk by joining me, I can see her point as well. I hadn’t thought about what the scouts to the north must be thinking or feeling. There hasn’t been any contact in nearly three weeks, their former leader dead. It will help them to see Kjerstin—to see that they have a leader who is invested enough that she has come from the royal island to meet them in person. They will feel more secure and motivated to do their work. I think again of the possibility of our uprising crumbling from within. It’d be easy for anyone to decide that we are not fit as leaders and fight to take control. It isn’t my place to decide if we are the right leaders, but I can see that we’ll have a better chance of succeeding if we stay on this path instead of breaking apart.

  “All right. You’ll come with me to the north. We leave before sundown.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Malthe stays on Hans Lollik Helle to continue the training of guards, both old and new. People who might not have ordinarily fought volunteer to pick up blades, both for their own defense and for the sake of the revolt. I’m glad that more of us have volunteered to learn to fight. If they hadn’t, it’s possible that Malthe would have begun to demand that they join the guard anyway. Forcing islanders to do work reminds me too much of the ways of the kongelig.

  Marieke is concerned that I leave the royal island while Malthe stays behind. He could begin to search for ways to grip control. He could spread lies about me and my ability as the leader.

  “Be quick in your mission,” Marieke tells me. “We can’t afford to wait much longer.”

  We take two ships with us from Hans Lollik Helle. It’s a risk to take two out of the four ships from the island, but after Valdemar Helle, we don’t want to take the chance of losing anyone else. Nearly twenty trained guards in all come with us. Many are posted on the decks of the ships, watching the seas for any sign of the Fjern. They’re in these waters, cutting down anyone who attempts to reach Skov and Årud and Nørup Helle. Ludjivik is the farthest in the distance. There’s been no contact with them since the start of the rebellion. For all we know, the islanders there are already dead.

  “This is something we should have done from the beginning,” Kjerstin says.

  It’s true. There isn’t any point in offering excuses. We stand together by the rail of the ship that leads the way, vaulting over the waves in the high wind. Kjerstin leans against the railing. Her wound has healed, with the help of herbs and kraft and a good amount of luck. She has a brown scar. Kjerstin doesn’t have many scars. Not as many as most of the islanders around her. She only had seven scars—eight now, including this one in her side. One on her knee, from when she ran and fell as a child. Another when the woman who worked the kitchens lashed the backs of her legs for dropping a bowl of mango stew. A small line runs over the top of her right lip. A tooth tore her skin when she was slapped by a Fjern overseer when she screamed as he forced his way into her. The one on her arm is when a thorn caught her skin as she ran through the mangroves of Hans Lollik Helle one night. She was fourteen and she decided she wanted to escape to the northern empires. She was afraid that she would be caught and hanged by her neck, so she returned to the barracks. The two rising scars on her back are from the whipping that followed when an overseer saw her trying to sneak through the shadows. No slave was supposed to be outside of their quarters at night. Konge Valdemar had never bothered to have Kjerstin whipped for any mistake she made. He, like all of the Fjern, never noticed her or any other islander when they were in the room, holding their trays of sugarcane wine and serving their dinners of roast goat and stewed fish. The overseer asked for permission from the king to have Kjerstin whipped. A part of her had hoped that Valdemar would feel a protectiveness and say that she could be punished another way. He had not brought Kjerstin into his bed, though she assumed that he would do so one day when he decided she was old enough. She assumed he wouldn’t want her skin marked. She was surprised when he said yes, impatiently and dismissively. The overseer took pleasure in whipping her before all the other slaves of the manor. The scar on Kjerstin’s wrist is from the night she’d tried to take her own life. She was afraid of drowning, so didn’t run into the sea as so many choose to do. Kjerstin hadn’t pressed the blade into her skin deep enough, and when she was found bleeding over the kitchen floor, she lied and said that her hand had slipped while she chopped the cassava.

  Kjerstin looks down at the clear of the sea beneath us. I want to ask her if she isn’t afraid. Most would lean away from the rail, scared that they would fall off balance and into the water and be sucked beneath the surface.

  “I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” Kjerstin says, “but I always thought Tuve wasn’t the best person for this job.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He only ever did as he was ordered. He didn’t consider alternatives. He didn’t think creatively about ways to get scouts around the Fjern and to the northern islands. He would send the messengers to their deaths without hesitation.”

  “You could have said something.”

  “Do you think that?” She glances at me over her shoulder. “You don’t like to admit this, Løren, but our meetings have been fashioned after the kongelig. And just like the kongelig, the room is organized by hierarchy. You think that everyone should voice their opinions, but in reality, we can’t always say what we really think.” I frown. These words pierce me, and I want to argue with them—but I’m worried that she might be right.

  “Besides,” she says, “I didn’t want to take time away from the planning by entering a power struggle with Tuve. I’d like the chance to prove that I’ll be a strong commander of the scouts. Don’t underestimate me and decide that I can’t do it before you’ve given me a proper chance.”

  She’s annoyed that I’d argued with her in the meeting room, telling her not to come with me to the northern islands. She’s annoyed at everyone, but she’s upset with me especially. Her annoyance is justified. Because she’s nineteen, three years younger than I am, I think she’s a child. Her youth is no reason to underestimate her. Agatha had been the most powerful of us all, and Kjerstin has been as helpful in this revolution as anyone else sitting around the table. Besides that, Kjerstin doesn’t want me to see her as a child. She holds my gaze for a moment more before she looks to the sea again.

  “We’ll be to Skov Helle soon,” she says. “We should prepare for our arrival.�
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  The shores of Skov Helle are deserted. I tell the islanders to wait on the sand with the guards, and I ask Frey to investigate the island with me and Kjerstin. It’ll be easier for three of us to go unnoticed and escape back to the ships if we encounter something we’d rather not. If all the islanders from the ship come onshore, we’ll only risk their lives. Frey isn’t happy that he must risk his life. He sees how some have become resigned to the fact that they won’t survive this war. He isn’t one of them. The man has fought too long and hard to die here in these islands. He wants to live. He wants to survive and feel, finally, what freedom is. It’s something he’d always dreamed of when he was young. He’d wanted to attempt escaping to the northern empires, but he’d been a slave of Lund Helle under Bernhand Lund and, eventually, Sigourney Rose. Lund Helle was too far away to have any hope of making it to the northern empires without being caught. This is what he tried to tell another boy who had whispered his plans of making it to the north and to freedom. They worked the fields without stopping for hours every day and sometimes into the night. The boy told Frey that one night, when the overseer was not watching, he would use the dark to slip away in the shadows. He would run to the shore and to the boat he had hidden by the bay. He’d leave for the north. The boy had asked Frey to come with him. Though Frey so badly wanted to know the feeling of stepping onto a shore and realizing that he finally owned the body that was his, he knew there was little chance either of them would survive the trip. He asked his friend not to leave. His friend did anyway. The boy was found by a ship of passing Fjern the next morning as he attempted to row past Niklasson Helle. He was brought back to Lund Helle. He cried as a rope was put around his neck. The body still hung from the tree weeks later to remind all of what would happen if they tried to run. Frey wished he’d been brave enough to cut his friend down and give him the burial he deserved. Frey thinks about his friend. He tries to remember the boy’s name, but he can’t.

  I march with Frey and Kjerstin through the groves, pushing our way through the brush that entangles our arms and legs. We try to cut our path with our machetes, but the island seems to be eating us alive. Mosquitoes swarm and gnats fly into my eyes. Flies begin to fill the air, buzzing all around us until they’re so thick that they bump against our skin and become a haze. The sound of their wings echo in the grove. I can smell the bodies before I see them. When we emerge in a clearing, the dead lay sprawled. Maggots cover skin and flesh. It’s hard to see what color a body’s skin had been in death. There are patches of hair. Some are pale, others dark with curls. Some wear the beige shirts and pants of workers, others the black uniforms of guards. These are both islanders and Fjern. Bodies are twisted, limbs across the dirt, stomachs spilling and necks cut. It was a massacre. Frey gags beside me. I almost do also. Kjerstin puts a hand over her nose and mouth. She walks forward, kicking over the body of a Fjernman.

  “This was a guard,” she says, voice muffled. “Not just a master killed the night of the revolt.”

  She points out that the bodies haven’t decomposed as much as they would have had they been killed a month before. This was a recent killing. She guesses that the Fjern must have attacked the islanders here and that they must have fought back.

  “But who won the battle?” Frey asks.

  We search the groves, but all around us are the bodies and the flies and the dirt. Any remnants of the villages are only embers and ash. When we return to the shore and row back to our ship, the others wait expectantly, hoping that we will say we’ve found a new place for them to live. I only say that we need to leave, unwilling and unable to describe what we’d found.

  Kjerstin stares at Skov Helle as we sail. It disappears behind us as the sun begins to sink to the west. “After we’ve found a new island for the others,” she says, “we need to return here and give the islanders the burial they deserve.”

  The night passes almost without incident. A guard sees a ship in the distance and warns us, and I wait on the deck with Kjerstin to see what the Fjern will do. It turns, heading south. This is one of the very ships that might have attacked and killed us if we hadn’t come with so many guards. They must see our numbers and decide not to risk a battle.

  “Should we follow?” Kjerstin asks, her eyes also on the ship on the horizon.

  I hesitate. “No,” I say. “Let them leave. We need to keep as many guards with us as possible.” There’s no point in risking a battle and losing lives.

  Though we believe we’re safe, Kjerstin and I don’t go back to sleep. We sit with cups of guavaberry rum to warm our empty stomachs. Both of us had given up our meals for the night to make sure the nonfighting islanders were fed. The breeze is cool against our faces.

  “Do you think the Fjern won the battle and abandoned the island?” Kjerstin asks me, thinking of the massacre of Skov Helle.

  The kongelig have Valdemar Helle. They could have come on their ship to the island—attacked and slaughtered everyone in sight. The islanders could have fought back. But by the number of both Fjern and islanders, we can’t be sure who won. More concerning is that there were no survivors on the island. Why would anyone have fought for Skov Helle, just to abandon it after the battle?

  “If it was the Fjern, why would they have left the island?” I ask her. “They would’ve used the opportunity to attack Hans Lollik Helle.”

  “And if it was us who won the battle?” she says. “Where are the islanders?”

  I’m not sure what to expect as we approach Nørup Helle. The sky is a light purple when the island emerges through the haze in the distance. We come closer, and it’s easier to see that the fields are green without any sign of fire. The groves still grow, and the hills are flush with life. Nørup Helle is small in comparison to Lund and Solberg and Niklasson Helle, but it’s self-sufficient with land that can be lived from without the help of other islands. If they haven’t faced any attack, the people shouldn’t have had any trouble surviving without aid. I hope that they’ll have enough space and resources to welcome the islanders on our ships.

  I row on one of the smaller boats with Kjerstin and Frey. The water is thick with seaweed that flows back and forth with every passing wave, silver fish flitting in between the green. The bay is rocky with sharp stones and shells that cut the bottoms of my feet as I drag the boat farther up onto the sand. Frey climbs out to help. Just as she splashes into the shallows, Kjerstin pauses. I follow her gaze and see islanders peering out from the groves that begin where the sand ends. I count five of them, all younger girls who had come to the sea to wash a basketful of dresses and sheets. After Skov Helle, I’m relieved that anyone is alive on this island.

  Kjerstin greets them with a pleasant smile. “We visit from Hans Lollik Helle,” she says.

  The girls come out from behind the trees. Kjerstin asks for Martijn. “He should have become the leader,” she says.

  One of the girls speaks before the others can. “Martijn is dead.”

  Kjerstin’s disappointment mirrors my own. “What happened?” she asks.

  The girls hesitate. “He was killed,” one says.

  “Zeger is in charge,” another adds.

  I haven’t heard the name Zeger before, and from the confusion on their faces, neither has Frey or Kjerstin. “Can you take us to him?” I ask.

  The girls comply, carrying the baskets by leaning them against their waists or holding them atop their heads. They glance back at us again and again as they walk us down the path of dirt mixed with salt and sand, as if they’re afraid we will have disappeared. The trees end and there’s a field of thin grass with a narrow dirt path worn down from years of footprints. We see the ruins of a village and a steady stream of smoke rising from a firepit with islanders busy at work. Some chop wood, others collect stones, and most work on the rebuilding of the burnt homes. Children laugh and scream as they chase one another. Chickens peck dirt at their feet. There are people who work the fields, many with the scars of training and battle.

  The villagers se
e us and stop their tasks. Children run to us, eyeing us carefully as we walk closer to the village. I pick out who Zeger is before the girls approach him. He looks like he’s a generation older than mine with the muscles and scars of a man who had trained in the guard. He gives orders to others as they patch the roof of a house with palms.

  One girl hurries to his side and whispers to him, and Zeger turns to face us with surprise. There’s a flicker of distrust in him—anger, that we’ve made it onto his island—but he hides it with a smile. “Visitors from the royal island,” he says, repeating what the girl had whispered. “And what are your names?”

  Frey introduces me as the leader of the islanders. There are reactions from all who stand around us—surprise, curiosity. Zeger’s concern deepens. He realizes who I am. He’s heard how the Fjern want my head. He also remembers that I have kraft. But he shows none of this as he nods in acknowledgment. “Then we must welcome you to our island.”

  He gestures to all who watch and waves them forward. Frey automatically tenses, hand on his machete. But the islanders only rush to examine us and pat our shoulders in greeting. The islanders of Nørup Helle are of all ages. Most of them aren’t guards, and from what I can see, the island has no natural defenses. If the Fjern ever attacked, Nørup Helle would fall. But they don’t seem to think on this fact. Everyone on the island has been focused on rebuilding. The village here was badly damaged in the fighting, and one woman explains that the other villages had been burned to the ground completely, the manors of the Fjern and the dead kongelig destroyed.