King of the Rising

by Kacen Callender

  I see a glimmer of my mother, enraged that I have not burned these islands to the ground. Sigourney leaves me there, returning to her guards across the field. I turn as well, marching back to Kjerstin and Geir, who both watch me, waiting for my orders. I don’t want to believe that Sigourney is right. She could not use her kraft on me, but maybe this was her way of forcing herself into my head. She has still confused me and made me second-guess myself. I’d thought it was the right choice to go to battle with Sigourney, but her words cloud my mind. She could be right. My choices have only been selfish. I fight Sigourney, not only for the islands but for my pride.

  Across the field, Sigourney is readying her men. She walks in front of the line, giving commands. We still have time to surrender. She said she would take only me prisoner and release my guards. They’d be able to escape, and Malthe, though he betrayed us here on Årud Helle, would be able to return to Hans Lollik Helle and lead our troops to victory. The rebellion doesn’t need me. I’ve told myself lies for why I must remain the commander, but I ignored that it was only ever my desire to have a role—to finally belong—that has fueled so many of my actions.

  The shame eats through me. I say the words to Kjerstin. “We won’t win this battle. We must surrender.”

  She’s shocked into silence. I can feel the disappointment emanating from Geir.

  “We’ve come all this way, Løren,” she says. “Fought our way here.”

  “They have twice as many guards.”

  “It hasn’t stopped us before.”

  I shake my head. “I can’t risk such a loss.”

  When I face Sigourney’s lines of guards, humiliation rages through me. I take one knee, then bend the other—the sign of surrender and defeat. A ripple of emotion stirs behind me. My guards had been ready to fight. Ready to die. There is some relief. Some hope that they will live. But there’s an overwhelming wave of anger. I’m a coward to go to my knees to the woman who is a traitor to our islands—disgusting, to willingly lower myself to the Fjern. I should have been willing to fight to the death.

  But it’s the choice that I’ve made. I’m not sure if it was the right choice, but if it means the lives of the guards behind me, I’m willing to lose their respect. I wait on my knees, wait for Sigourney to give the call of victory and allow my men to retreat with Kjerstin and Geir. From across the field, I can see the pity in her smile. She raises her hand, and by the time she’s brought it down, a rain of arrows falls on us.

  An arrow pierces my shoulder. Pain flashes through me, and the men behind me scream. An arrow has gone through Kjerstin’s leg and she’s on the dirt beside me. I can’t think with the pain that takes over every nerve in my body. I pull out the arrow just as the Fjern descend on us. Sigourney Rose has promised Lothar a massacre. A massacre is what he will receive.

  I thrust the arrow like a spear and pick up my machete, cutting down the Fjern that swarm us with my good arm, but I begin to see that this is a battle we will lose. Men behind us yell in death. Geir is lost to the masses of bodies pushing against us, dirt flying through the air, blood slicking the grass. Kjerstin fights beside me, a cut to her side and her arm, her face bloodied and panic in her eyes. She never believed she would make it through this war alive, but this doesn’t mean she was prepared to die.

  Air is stuck in my throat. I begin to choke. I drop my machete, hands at my neck. It feels like someone is strangling me. In front of me is Sigourney. She appears before me like a spirit. There is chaos surrounding her, battle swirling around her as if she is the cause of it as she remains free of dirt and blood. There’s an apology in her eyes. She believes this is the most merciful way for me to die. If I continue to fight the way I do, I will survive the blades of the Fjern. I will be captured and imprisoned and brought to Lothar Niklasson, where I’ll be tortured by the kongelig. She thinks she shows me a mercy, taking my life this way. Yet as she can feel her kraft flow through me, her eyes still widen in surprise when she gasps. She puts one hand to her neck as she realizes she can’t breathe.

  She sends me the simple order. Release me.

  If I die, you die with me.

  She chokes, falling to her knees. She’s taken lives with her kraft, but she has never experienced someone using her power against her as I do. Tears sting her eyes.

  Release me!

  When I feel air rush into my lungs, I nearly fall with relief. Sigourney stands, infuriated, but I grip the handle of my machete. She looks from the blade and to me. Just as I raise the blade to throw it at her chest, she seizes my arm with her power. I can feel her trying to force the machete toward my gut, but I fight against her kraft, straining to keep the wall in place. She’s a towering force, and I’m exhausted from the day of battle, distracted from the pain in my shoulder—

  There are shouts from the valley. Sigourney releases me in surprise. I throw the blade, but she gasps and takes hold of the body of a Fjern that fights near, forcing him to trip over his own feet and take the blade, slicing into his mouth. He falls dead, and Sigourney looks from me and to the troops that run from shore. Malthe is in the lead. While she’d been distracted with our battle, none of the Fjern realized that Malthe was stealing toward us.

  I realize this was Malthe’s plan from the beginning. Allow us to take the brunt of the battle, to nearly fall to the Fjern, so that we can cut down the number of guards he would have to fight when he arrived. He would be seen as a hero to the guards—the commander that has saved their lives. Any question of why he hadn’t been here as planned would be forgotten once he’s killed Sigourney and the Fjern that follow her.

  The sight of Malthe revives us. The battle hardens, and Malthe strikes down any Fjern in his way. He focuses on clearing a path straight for Sigourney. She can see this as well. She tries to take control of Malthe, but I hold my wall against her, allowing him to come closer. But Malthe, with his effortless ability with the machete, is still overrun by the guards in his way. There are still too many of them, and any revitalized energy falls to the waves of Fjern that keep coming and coming. The field is filled with corpses. Bodies blanket the ground, and I trip over arms and legs and spilled intestines, slip on the blood that turns the dirt to mud. I see Geir dead on the ground, his chest open to show his flowering ribs. I see no sign of Kjerstin. I can only see the fact, as clear as the blue of the sky above: We will not win this battle. We’ll die here on Årud Helle.

  I was wrong to bring us here, but there’s still a chance we could make it from the island. “Retreat,” I yell hoarsely. “Retreat!”

  There are some islanders who hear me and continue to fight. They will not retreat. They will not run from the Fjern. They prefer to die here. There are others who hear me and run—others who have already begun to run, down the rocky terrain and toward the thin trees of the coconut groves. The pain in my shoulder is sharp, and my leg was also cut without my realizing, pink muscle gushing blood. I should die here. I think that there isn’t a purpose to me, not when I’ve ruined the course of the uprising. I should die here on the battlefield with my guards.

  But my body still moves, my legs running through the pain. After all of this time, I’m still afraid to die. I fall down the hill, rolling into rocks that dig into my sides. I stagger to my feet, limping, arrows shooting past. Other islanders running with me are hit in their backs. They fall, and still I run. I run to the trees and burst out of them, toward the village. The islanders who stayed behind to guard the path are dead on the ground, cut down by the Fjern who must have found them before coming to the battlefield. I reach the gray dirt and the beginnings of the bay.

  I hear a heavy breath and see that Malthe runs behind me. I pause, but realize at the last moment that I shouldn’t have. He swings his machete at me. I fall to avoid it. I scramble backward, and he raises his machete and hits dirt and stone. He’s exhausted, but he realizes this will be his last opportunity to kill me.

  I stay on the ground, breathing heavy. He looks down at me.

  “Spirits, boy,”
he says. “You should’ve just done what I commanded from the beginning.”

  “You’re right.”

  He’s surprised by my admission. There are shouts and screams from the battlefield. More islanders run past, headed for the bay. We watch them go before Malthe’s gaze lands on me again.

  “Kill me and you won’t have as much of a chance to make it from Årud Helle alive,” I tell him.

  He sees that this is true. “And once we return to Hans Lollik Helle?” he says. “You’ll tell everyone of what I’ve done.”

  I’m not sure what I’ll do yet. I tell him this, and he accepts the plain truth. He extends a hand and helps me to my feet. I almost expect him to take the chance to slide the blade into my side, but he doesn’t take the chance, not with islanders who still run past us to the bay and to the ships that wait.

  We run to the sand. I see Kjerstin, blood smeared across her face and drenching her shirt. I’m not sure if the blood is hers or another’s. She looks at me with dull eyes, then back at the ships on the sea that burn. The Fjern set fires to each.

  “We’ll die here,” she says with a hollow voice.

  There are six of us who have made it from the battlefield. Six, out of the sixty who had come. Sigourney and the Fjern haven’t followed us yet, but if we wait any longer there won’t be much more time. The sand is still lined with the boats we’d taken from the ships. I begin to push one onto the shallows.

  “Do you really believe we’ll all make it to Hans Lollik Helle on that?” Kjerstin demands.

  “Probably not,” I admit, “but we have to try.”

  She hesitates, but in the distance I can see the Fjern walking toward us. There’s no need to run. They’ve won, and once they find us and any of the other islanders hiding on Årud Helle, they’ll take their time killing us.

  “Hurry,” I tell them, and Kjerstin climbs into one boat with me, while Malthe takes another and also pushes it out onto the waters. We row out from the bay. The Fjern set themselves up on the sand, bows and arrows at the ready. They shoot. We try to duck and dodge, but on the other boat, one arrow pierces a guard in the cheek. They take their time reloading their arrows—this is a game to them as we try to paddle as fast as we can against the tide, past the coral reefs. Another set of arrows fly. They thud into the boat. Kjerstin gasps in pain. An arrow has landed in her back. Blood leaks from her mouth. I curse. I want to hold a hand to her wound, but if I stop rowing, the Fjern will only continue to shoot us all down.

  Once we’re far out enough, the Fjern on the sand are small, and their arrows can’t reach us. We don’t have much time. Eventually they’ll realize that I was one of the islanders on these boats and that I’ve escaped. They’ll send their ships after us so that Sigourney can take me prisoner. Still, I let go of the paddle, leaving the one other guard to move us along on the current behind Malthe’s boat. The arrow shaft is stuck in Kjerstin. I’m afraid it’s pierced her lungs. I’m afraid to pull. She could bleed out. I rip cloth and dunk it into saltwater, hold it at her back. Kjerstin feels a pain she’s never experienced. She can barely look at me. She shakes her head, tears leaking from her eyes. She wants it to stop. She wants it to end. I try to use the kraft to heal her flesh, but the wound is too deep. She should already be dead.

  Blood is on her lips. “I shouldn’t have survived that battle,” she says, her voice hoarse. The pain squeezes my insides. I realize what she means. I understand what she asks of me.

  “You’ll be all right,” I tell her. “We’ll come to Hans Lollik Helle—”

  “I’ll be dead by then,” she says. She knows that she won’t make it through the night. It’ll take hours to return to the royal island. And if she did live—what then? There were no herbs that would repair her lungs, her back, her spine. She can feel how broken she is inside. She can feel that no healer will be able to save her. She will only lie in pain for hours, days, in a torture that will not end—only for her to die then.

  “I shouldn’t have survived,” she tells me again. She hopes this will be solace for me. She was never meant to survive this. But it’s no solace. She’d given me hope. The pain is physical, shards in my chest. It makes me bend against my will, cracking through me as emotion grows. Mourning Kjerstin now would do no good. She would only be impatient with me. She braves a steadying breath and puts her hand on mine. I clench the blade and cut her throat as quickly as I can. Her eyes glaze as she gasps, gurgling for breath. I hold her close as her body shudders against mine. I continue to hold her after she stills. Her blood soaks me. The guard has stopped rowing, and the boat holding Malthe rides up and down on the waves as they watch us.

  “She’ll weigh the boat,” the guard says. He doesn’t mean to be harsh, only to speak the truth. Kjerstin deserves a proper ceremony and ritual burying her at sea. I close my eyes and ask for her forgiveness, then murmur a prayer once I’ve pulled the arrow from her back and lowered her into the sea. She floats, her eyes half-open as she stares at the sky. I watch as the water washes over her and she begins to sink into the depths.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  After taking Årud Helle, the Fjern waste little time in spreading their reach. We receive reports of the stream of ships that have arrived from Solberg and Niklasson Helle, taking Nørup. It happens within a day, and the scouts who managed to survive bring messages of carnage. The islanders fought valiantly, but once it became clear that the islands would be lost to the Fjern, the guards of the northern empires retreated. The islanders that survived the massacres came to Hans Lollik Helle. The barracks are overwhelmed, no space for them all to rest, the food supply gone.

  We’re surrounded. It’s only a matter of time before the Fjern attack. When they do, we’ll be lost.

  Marieke waits in the meeting room when I arrive. It isn’t a surprise when Malthe comes with guards who follow. Malthe has already told all of the battle of Årud Helle. It was a battle he has argued against from the beginning, but in my poor leadership, I insisted. While there, I was a coward and surrendered to the Fjern and Sigourney Rose, trusting them to show us mercy. They did not. They killed nearly everyone, and we barely managed to escape with our lives. Malthe has declared, to the agreement of nearly all on this island, that I should be imprisoned and punished for what has inevitably become the cause of the end of our uprising.

  I don’t fight. Georg holds my hands behind my back without tying them. He takes me from the meeting room, down the hall and to the dungeons. Though he doesn’t say the words, I can feel the apology in him. He respects me, but he agrees that Malthe is right. He agrees that the people of this island will need me to be punished for the mistakes I’ve made, for leading us into ruin. He thinks that I’ll probably have to die.

  I don’t try to convince him otherwise. He takes me into the manor of Herregård Constantjin and down into the dark of the dungeons where Patrika Årud had once awaited her own fate. Georg locks me in my cell, unable to look me in the eye. He’s ashamed of betraying the loyalty he once had for me.

  “I can’t blame you for doing what you think is right,” I tell him. But this doesn’t ease his mind. He locks my cell and leaves me in the shadows.

  This time, when he comes to me, I feel the ache spread through my skull until it becomes a piercing sting. I’d assumed the pain was connected to the bond I shared with Sigourney Rose. While our kraft did cause a pressure, the sharp pain was not caused by her. It was caused by the man who watched me from the shadows always. I remember now. I’d seen him in the halls of Herregård Constantjin. He’d smiled and used his kraft to take my memory, the way he had when I first saw him and realized he had a kraft that he hid from everyone else. He’d also used his kraft to take and change memories of the guards and Malthe himself the night we were ambushed by the Fjern. Tuve has pretended to be dead for weeks. He traveled between the islands with ease, coming to the royal island to gain his knowledge and bring it back to his master, Lothar Niklasson. To the kongelig, islanders are not meant to have kraft. They are executed
for the power that the Fjern believe is their divine right. Yet Lothar Niklasson has kept his secrets from the other Fjern. He learned of Tuve’s ability and knew that it could have its uses. Tuve has sensed that his master might have him killed one day, but he’s chosen not to focus on that thought.

  Tuve suggested to his master that he could kill us. It would’ve been easy to take my memory and make me forget I’d seen him standing in the shadows. Easy to stick his blade into my gut and be done with it. He’d been tempted to do it many times, but his master had asked him to wait. The time would come. But for now, it wouldn’t do for Tuve to kill the leader of the revolution. I would become a martyr and in my death my followers would be impassioned. I’d be replaced, and there’d be too high of a chance that Tuve would be seen and captured. Lothar Niklasson would lose his tie to valuable information. No, Tuve was not to kill me—not yet. He lets me know that he’ll enjoy the moment when the time does come.

  Tuve has hated me and everyone else who has played a part in this rebellion. He’s hated how we betrayed our masters. Tuve believed the Fjern when they said he was not a man who could rule himself. He believed them when they said he would need their orders and need obedience to serve the gods that they served as well. Tuve believed that he had no purpose in life but to devote himself to the ones who claimed him. And there is his daughter. He left the girl on Årud Helle. He understood that she was not his. She, too, was owned by her master. But he didn’t want her to lose her life, and he thinks that we risked her life and his own by starting this war. He hates me and all the islanders of the revolution. He hates that we sacrifice the lives of innocents.