Princesses of the Ironbound Boxset: Books 1 - 3 (Barbarian Outcast, Barbarian Assassin, Barbarian Alchemist)

by Aaron Crash

  She wasn’t talking, so it was up to him. That was fine. She was a good listener, and he enjoyed that.

  “I liked Winterhome all right. I drank with the man and his friends after I bloodied him. He told me about Old Ironbound, and he said if I could pass the Open Exam, I might be able to get rid of this curse on me.”

  “What curse?” she asked.

  “The Lonely Man’s curse.” He stripped a long thread of meat from his hunk of elk jerky. He didn’t want to share his heart with her. He didn’t want to speak of his shame ever.

  Grandmother Rabbit’s spirit drew close. Our secrets poison us. Time heals the wounds on our skin. The wounds in our hearts will fester unless spoken aloud. We heal through our mouths because, for some things, there is no better salve than words.

  That was partly her own wisdom, and partly from the Sacred Mysteries of the Ax.

  He gazed at the elf girl, so very strange, and so very beautiful. Could he trust her? She was certainly better than that Jennybelle Josen witch, who had kept her distance. Jenny would only cast smiles at him, and when he drew close, she’d find some escape. Another game, another trick, to keep him off-balance.

  He wished he could find a battle brother to confide in, but damn the Ax, there were so few men at Old Ironbound. The stories were true. The Withering had left Thera mostly populated with women. At first that had seemed like a paradise, but now the whole continent felt as cursed as he was.

  He sighed. “You really don’t talk much, do you?”

  Lillee shrugged.

  “Your next question should be...who is the Lonely Man?”

  A rare smile curved her lips. “Who is the Lonely Man?”

  He chuckled at the pain in his heart. These words were going to be hard to speak. But he spoke them, to tell his story, to heal.

  Chapter Seven

  THE CRACK LAY BETWEEN the Black Wolf Clan and the White Wolf people. The Crack was a bite in the world, a sloping ravine that led to a jagged place of darkness and cold. The ice at the bottom of the Crack never melted, not even in the hottest summer. The East-West Path crossed it, so people had to maneuver down one side, make the trek through the snow, and make the ascent.

  The Crack was haunted. Everyone knew that. It spat out the night bears, huge monsters that hungered for souls instead of blood and meat. Unnatural—the whole place was unnatural, but a part of life on the tundra.

  A year ago, a family of the White Wolf Clan went down there and never returned. Then people from the Black Wolf Clan went missing. King Ymok liked to ignore any problem he could, and he claimed that though the Crack was dangerous, there was nothing anyone could do.

  One night in late spring, a man from the Red Elk Clan made it out, and he told stories of a demon down there. He called the demon the Lonely Man, a villain from any number of grandmother stories. The tales warned that men should not live alone. People should eat together, be together, when they went to sleep and when they woke up. Like wolf packs, everyone in the clans should know their place and know it well.

  Ymir had confronted his father. They could not let this demon feast without being punished. This Lonely Man needed to be removed from the world. All his battle brothers agreed. Secret messengers were sent out to all the clans. Without Ymok’s permission, Ymir went to Lost Herot to gather allies and to lead the campaign.

  With fifty warriors from different clans, even some women, they went down into the Crack.

  On the beach, telling the story to Lillee, Ymir shivered. He remembered the strange trees, covered in cold, their green leaves frozen to their branches. How long had they been like that? Impossible to know. The East-West Path was clear enough to see, a trail through the snow. There were no signs of fires and no campsites—anyone passing through the Crack would do so in a hurry.

  Ymir, his brothers, his enemies, all traipsed through the snow, though there were no tracks. This Lonely Man must’ve flown in to kill those people. Or perhaps the winds had come through the ravine, sweeping snow over the demon’s spoor.

  Either way, they got lucky. They found the archway cut into the world’s rock. Strange inscriptions were carved into the archway, with figures faded into obscurity by time. The place stank of rotting meat being cooked on a fire made of shit.

  A few of the warriors fled. Not the Black Wolf, and not the White. They broke branches off the frozen trees to create torches, and they started down steps, actual steps, which shouldn’t have been there. Therans, their wars and empires, had never reached into the North, not in any stories, not in any clan’s collective memory.

  Maybe the demon had fashioned its home there, using magic to create the archway, the inscriptions, and the steps.

  Ymir recalled the heat and sweat. The warriors dumped their heavy bear cloaks and gripped their axes and spears with white knuckles. A few of the older men, White Wolf men, said they would stay and watch over the cast-off gear. It was a craven excuse.

  Again, Ymir led the way down. He told his closest brother, Ykor, to ready his bow. Ykor was a deadly shot.

  Down they went, into the heat, into the stink, all of the cold gone. They emptied their waterskins into their mouths because it was so hellishly hot.

  The stairs finally levelled off, and there was another archway. More strange letters, not Pidgin but something close. Ymir managed to read a few of the words, and they were mostly warnings, but one word stood out. Sleeping. Or dreaming. Something like that.

  They’d not come all that way to turn around. The weak had already fled or stayed behind. Only the brave remained. And they were brave—to die in such a place was a bad fate. Ghosts were made there, restless ghosts who would never find their kin and never enjoy the Sunday fires of their ancestors.

  Ymir strode through the archway with his battle ax in his hand and his hatchet at his belt. Leather shirt, leather pants, and his thick elk-hide boots. Ynyo, an older man with a good family, held a torch in one hand and his hand ax in the other. Out of all of them, Ynyo had the most to lose.

  The evil cave they found was a vast stinking pit of black smoke and boiling mud—the thing that lived there was at home in both. Bright green water steamed in pools among tiles, not ceramic but a strange stone, laid out in patterns destroyed by black rock. The world’s blood, lava, had spilled into the pit at some point.

  Long stalactites hung down from the ceiling above.

  Lillee sat listening intently.

  Ymir cleared his throat. “There were twenty-three of us, including me, a bad number. A lonely number. Twenty-three has no friends.”

  Grandfather Bear had liked to play games with numbers like that.

  Lillee hadn’t spoken a word. A wave crashed. A spray of wet, maybe the ocean, maybe rain, sprinkled them. Ymir squeezed his eyes shut against the memories. The wound in his heart felt like it would kill him.

  “Torches are fickle light. Demon fire? Even more so. This demon, it rose from a center pool, a bubbling pool of black mud. The mud streamed off what could be a cloak, or a coat, or something. It had a spear, and I’ll never forget the blade on that spear. Runes glowed on the black metal, red runes, a bloody light.

  “Two eyes of flame opened in the face of the thing. A flame of mouth roared. None of the men ran. None of the women. We had three women, holding their thick elk-hide shields to protect us, but they had weapons as well. Axes because an ax is a good weapon. Three axes, and three, of course, is a very good number. Three moons. A family begins with three.”

  Ymir drew in a deep breath. “We fought the thing, but the demon’s spear found its mark, again and again, and always the heart. Even our best healers cannot heal such wounds. Men, women, fell. The demon was everywhere at once, riding through the smoke and stink. You can’t believe the smell of it, Lillee. I can still smell it. Even after all these months.

  “Arrows passed through its body, but not axes. I rushed it, careful of the boiling pools and boiling mud, and I sank my battle ax into the breast of the thing. I was thrown aside, and it laughed. I hit it
with my best, and it laughed.”

  Ymir grinned like a mad dog. “It didn’t laugh for long. I’d be damned by the Axman if I was going to let it kill my brothers. At that moment? Even the White Wolf men were my brothers. We were certainly more similar to each other than to that thing and its fucking spear.

  “It passed under a stalactite, and I hurled my hand ax. The stone spear broke and pierced it through its body. It was pinned to the tiles. I mentioned the tiles, yes? A creamy white with pink veins in them. Pretty, I guess, though chipped and destroyed.”

  “Marble,” Lillee whispered.

  “I don’t know what that is.” He shrugged. He could ask later. “I retrieved my ax. The mud spouted, and Ynyo was covered in it, burned, so badly burned. Ykor dragged him out. The Lonely Man didn’t want us to leave alive. It somehow was destroying its cave. The ground shook like the Axman himself was hammering on the world and the Shieldwoman was shrieking with him, battering the ground with her shield.

  “The Lonely Man was still alive. I retrieved my battle ax to take off its head. I approached it and looked into its flaming eyes. By this time, I was alone. It spoke to me. It said things to me, some of which I can remember, but mostly I’ve forgotten. I remember its last words. It said, ‘I curse you. I curse you forever. Let the sleeper wake from the dream!’”

  He touched his belly. “I felt it reach into me, here, and it hurt. I don’t give pain much thought because life is pain. But that agony put a rage in me. I aimed my ax where I thought its neck was and hacked into its flesh, over and over, until I hewed off its head. A skull went clattering across the tiles, marble tiles it seems. A very human skull. Then I fled.”

  Lillee didn’t speak. She reached out and held his hand. Her fingers were rough from the work, but the touch felt divine. It had been months since he’d last been touched. Men were not meant to live alone.

  He found a smile. “You know, fighting the monster wasn’t the worst part. I made it out alive as the ceiling came crashing down, burying that fucking place forever. I met my brothers, and they pointed at me with fear on their faces. I was glowing. Every bit of my skin was glowing. Cursed, I was cursed. I guess my eyes change color, but I never see it. Whenever I look, they are brown. What color are they now?”

  “Brown,” the elf girl whispered.

  He nodded. “Even before we left the Crack, my battle brothers were whispering against me. My condition grew worse. In our tent, I would wake and be floating off my bear blanket, and people saw it. My Ilhelda wouldn’t make love to me. My brothers avoided me. I was brought before my father, the king, and he told me I had to leave. I was cursed with magic. He cried a single tear. It was the only one I’d ever seen.”

  Ymir swallowed and clenched his teeth. “He was only doing the will of the clan. Everyone wanted me gone, including my mother, though I was never close to her. My grandparents, yes, but they had passed several seasons ago. Age kills us if nothing else does.

  “I begged my father to reconsider. When begging didn’t work, I raged, and picked fights, and told them I had killed the demon to spare all the clans, and they didn’t care.” He paused, not sure if he was on the verge of snarling or weeping. “I would’ve been the same. If it had been Ykor, or Ynyo, or even my own father, I would’ve said the same. The clan is more important than the man. Always. Our lives depend on that fact.”

  He calmed himself. For the first time in months, his insides weren’t knotted and bleeding sorrow. The wound in his heart was still there, it always would be, but the healing had begun. He murmured, “Because for some things, there is no better salve than words.”

  “That’s beautiful.” Lillee squeezed his hand. Something in her eyes, something hidden away, revealed itself. A longing, a sadness, and he felt a shift in the elf girl.

  “It’s from the stories of my clans. And my grandmother.” He inhaled, smelling the ocean, and the musky girl, who didn’t smell sweet, but she smelled good. The waves continued their relentless rolling up and down the beach.

  “So you are here to get the curse removed.” Lillee sounded like she knew something about curses.

  “Even if I do, the Black Wolf Clan won’t take me back. They’ll think I’m trying to trick them. Perhaps if I returned, and if I did some great heroic thing, that might allay their fears. Still, they would whisper. Clans love stories, either about the Axman and the Shieldmaiden, or about their neighbors. The gossip about me would never end.” He shook his head. “Is it the Lonely Man’s curse? Or is it this dusza thing?”

  Lille then did the unexpected. She pushed him down on his back. He could’ve overpowered her, but that seemed silly. He’d told her his greatest shame. He had to trust her. And he was curious where this might lead.

  She pulled up her tunic to straddle him. “There are four branches of magic.”

  He knew this. His hands rested on her hips, surprisingly pliant on her spare frame. “Sunfire, Moons, the Flow, and the Form.”

  She nodded and then slide her forearm cuff halfway off her arm. She let out a gasp. And then a whimper. Her eyes closed in a wince that pulled on the “S” tattoo on her temple. “Lie still.”

  He wasn’t about to argue. She was subtly grinding on him, moving her hips and brushing her sensitive sex against his pubic bone.

  “The Flow.” Her voice was half words, half sighs. “The Flow is water and ice, but it’s also the flow of life, time flowing, the moments flowing together. I am of the Flow, and you are too. You were brought to Old Ironbound for a reason. They should’ve put you in Sunfire, since you are hot passion and violence. Instead, they put you in the Flow. To test you.”

  She stopped moving. Her right hand still held the forearm cuff halfway off her wrist. What was that thing? Did it hinder her power or help it?

  Ymir felt the energy crackle between them, and the hair on the back of his neck lifted. This was magic. Was she a witch? Was she going to capture him in a spell?

  If it had been Jenny, he would have thrown her off him. This was Lillee, fragile, pink-lipped, and green eyed. Her braid had come undone, her hair a bit wild around the points of her ears.

  The nipples under her tunic were hard. He gazed up at her face. Her eyes were closed, and her cheeks were flushed.

  She sobbed. “The Flow is the water in us. The Flow is our juices...mine, and yours, and life’s. There is so much life in you.”

  Yes, his cock was rock hard under his elk-hide pants. “Tell me more about these juices.”

  “Hush,” she growled at him.

  He liked this side of her even as he feared it. She was lost in her magic.

  “Jelu jelarum!” the words erupted from her.

  She cried out before laying herself onto him. She kissed him savagely. She grunted as she ground her sex on his big shaft, and her lips were soft, wet, as soft as her tongue that reached to touch his.

  Lust drove away every one of Ymir’s conscious thoughts. He rolled them over, off the bear pelt and onto the sand. She was sucking on his tongue, and he was grinding his aching manhood into her wet cleft, soaking her blue underwear. Her smell was a battle cry in his nose. She was a long, skinny thing, but at that moment, she seemed up to the task to take him inside her and rejoice in a pounding.

  One of her strong hands gripped his head, pulling his hair, and the other clutched his ass, hard, almost painfully. Again, Ymir didn’t mind pain. Especially when he was drinking in this elf creature, her mouth, her lips, and her tongue.

  Beware the quiet ones, Ynyo had said one night, before he’d lost half his face to the Lonely Man’s boiling mud. The quiet ones will eat you up. Such wisdom there!

  Speaking of wisdom, the clans people had a great deal of knowledge when it came to sex, and a few rules, which to break was taboo.

  Ymir fought his uncontrollable lust and won. He backed off her, pushed her tunic up, and pulled her sodden underwear off. He sniffed them and let her see. He wanted her to understand he intended to enjoy every part of her, and he wasn’t some weak-hearted Theran
boy. He was a man who loved women.

  His eyes went to her hairy slit, surprisingly thick for such a thin woman.

  Then he gazed into her half-closed eyes. “We can do this, we can have sex, but first we both need to answer three questions. Will it disrespect our families? Will it disrespect ourselves? And will there be babies?”

  Those were the three questions you had to ask before you had sex. Three simple questions that held the life of the clan in their answers. Because the people of the tundra were a free folk in most ways, chained in others—chained by death and cold to one another. Sleep with the wrong person? You could splinter a family. Have a child with someone you cared little for? You could splinter your life.

  “Wha...wha...what?” Lillee asked, breathing hard. The cuff was three-quarters off her arm. Only her hand remained inside. At the tip, he noticed two eyeholes. He could easily picture a lock fitting into the cuff to close it. What did that damn piece of jewelry mean?

  Those questions could wait.

  He had three answers to give. “I have no family to disrespect,” he said. “As for myself, I haven’t been with anyone since the innkeeper’s daughter at the tavern. Before her, it was my Ilhelda, and she is lost forever to me. I want this, Lillee. I want you. As for babies, we don’t need to do the act, but there are other things we can do. What are your answers?”

  Tears leaked from her closed eyes. She shook her head from side to side, and then slid the cuff back up to her elbow. “I can’t. I want to, but I can’t. You speak of disrespect; there is too much already, for me, for my family, for my friends. I’m sorry. I can’t. I’m so sorry.”

  Ymir pulled her into an embrace and held her while she wept. Better for her to be honest before than after. He’d find other women in the college. They couldn’t work him all the time, and once classes started and the hallways filled, he would find someone.

  “I’d like for us to be friends still,” Ymir whispered. “You are the only friend I have. And you know my shame. Please, do not speak of it to others. I will trust you.”