A King Of Crows

by T L Drew

  And then Solitude Island could be seen by their foggy eyes, appearing in the distance through the bitter rain. It was larger than he could have comprehended; on each end of Solitude, stood at the north and the south of the foreboding island, were the two towers of Solitude. It where the slaves were to live out their days, so tall that the tops of the giant towers disappeared into the rain clouds and were painted so dark that they were as black as crow feathers. Slowly the island came closer and closer and the black-haired prince could feel his legs beginning to quake. His heart pounded so hard in his chest that it almost hurt and a lump stuck in his throat.

  Goran frightfully twisted the burning ring on his finger. As his fear deepened, the ocean appeared to grow rougher.

  White-eyed men paced the deck, taller than any southern man Goran had seen, with golden skin and long ebony hair, braided down their backs. Although Albonian waters were far from warm and the wind was harsh, they wore nothing but golden silk around their hips and leather sandals upon their feet, once northern men, from the desert, centuries prior. Goran had heard the twisted tales of cannibalism, the stories that frightened him more than the others. The Afterling had been men once, but now they barely bore any resemblance to mankind.

  A slave tried to throw himself from the ship, but his strive came to no avail. The Afterling caught him before he could touch the rough water. Even with his hands bound, Goran supposed he’d rather drown than face Solitude Island. The Afterling guards flung him back upon the deck, removed their coiled whips, and lashed him until he was bloody and screamed for mercy. They showed him no mercy. The slave was whipped until his spine was exposed to the open air. They flogged him until he was lifeless upon the deck, dying.

  Goran tried not to look, but the man’s screams had filled his ears and haunted his mind.

  ‘You belong to us now,’ one of the Afterling guards screamed over the growing roar of the ocean, addressing the slaves upon the deck. Goran’s eyes lingered on the dead man, lashed and bloody, his body trembling. He continued to fumble with his ring. Water began to wash over them as the ship began to rock. ‘Try to escape, and this is your fate.’ The Afterling guard pointed to the flogged man upon the deck, bleeding and lifeless. The sea grew so rough that the prisoners and their captors could barely stand. The wild ocean thrashed against the ship.

  He took off his ring, and the tides appeared to calm.

  JORGEN

  Jorgen’s hands were so cold they felt like they might shatter, but the chill in the air was nothing like the frozen south. He told himself he should be grateful that he didn’t dwell in the snow like his closest friends did, like his older sister Abigail did, but he couldn’t help but love the snow they resided in. It was a different world in the south, and despite the hatred he had always felt inside the Stone Keep, he found that he loved the snow and the mountains regardless.

  With one black eye closed, Jorgen pulled back on the fine, coarse string of his hand-carved bow. He could feel the soft feathers at the end of the arrow against his cut, frozen fingertips and drew a sharp breath from the bitter wet air. The breeze numbed him. He could see the creature he hunted through the breaks in the pine trees, the creature’s single eye blinking relentlessly and the claws on the ends of its boiled fingers were as sharp as knives wielded from steel. Jorgen had killed many of Balfold’s man-eating trolls, so many it had become tiring second nature, but today he smiled as he aimed, the eyes of his love Nora and the brother of Erik’s betrothed, Jakub Krea watching him, waiting to see the kill. ‘There is the creature,’ Jorgen motioned to the beast through the breaks in the trees.

  The troll didn’t venture closer. An irritation took Jorgen as he waited patiently.

  ‘What in the west is that?’ Jakub Krea’s voice whispered through the trees, his blond hair soaked from the Balfold rain, a boy of fourteen and his body shook wildly with a new kind of fear taking him. His voice was high and his eyes were a dull green. ‘I have never seen a creature like that before.’

  ‘It is nothing more than a common Balfold troll,’ Jorgen uttered back to the boy, his arrow following the creature as it moved away from Jorgen. ‘An easy kill for a warrior of Balfold, but a mighty opponent for a man unaccustomed to these lands – the creatures here are not as they are upon the Emerald Isles.’

  ‘The boy trembles,’ Nora grinned mockingly, crouching behind Jorgen and stared at Jakub Krea over her shoulder. ‘He is frightened of this place, frightened of the monsters that lurk behind every tree.’

  ‘Monsters?’ Jakub asked as he tightened his grip on his unused blade.

  ‘This creature is small compared to others that inhabit this forest,’ Nora failed to contain her grin, mocking the boy who was six years her junior – a boy from the Emerald Isles who had arrived on Balfold soil for the wedding of his sister, to marry Erik. ‘This one will eat you whole and use your bones to pry your flesh from his teeth...but the other creatures make this beast look small.’

  ‘Stop taunting the boy.’ Jorgen laughed quietly, his eye still focused upon the unsuspecting troll as they crouched in the brushes, his knees sinking into the damp Balfold soil. Jorgen didn’t release his arrow. The creature was not close enough. ‘He is to be my brother-by-law, when his sister and my brother marry. You’ll have the rest of your life to taunt him.’

  ‘I do not fear that creature,’ Jakub defended, realising they mocked him. ‘The beast should fear me. I am stronger than I appear, I’ll have you know.’

  ‘Then take the shot,’ Jorgen challenged, lowering his bow. ‘Holster your sword, draw your bow and shoot it. The beast will charge when it is close enough to smell you and only then can you be close enough to take the shot. You’ll have precisely one minute to shoot it in the eye and blind it before it grabs you and crunches your bones to dust while you’re still breathing.’

  Jorgen could see Jakub subtly gulp, sweat beading down his pallid forehead. Nora found it amusing and sat back in the fallen orange leaves that matched her hair, grinning to her love. ‘Why can I not just shoot it?’ Jakub gulped again, his hands shaking.

  The twenty-four-year-old man grinned at the young blond boy. ‘The creature’s skin is thick, impenetrable by mere arrows; you must be close enough that you can smell the rotting flesh stuck between its teeth to get the perfect shot, right in the eye, so that when it is blind you can cut its head from its shoulders. Are you up to the challenge, Jake?’

  Hesitantly, Jakub Krea took the challenge, pushing past Jorgen Black in the spiking bushes and unsheathing his unused bow. Jorgen handed him a new arrow. ‘You have one shot,’ Jorgen reminded him. ‘Try not to lose your head.’

  The fourteen-year-old boy ignored Jorgen and took a deep breath, focusing, narrowing his dull green eyes. The creature began to move slightly closer, his nose twitching, sniffing for flesh. It took large careful steps through the damp mud of the forest floor, hungry, it’s head twisting wildly in all directions as it searched for the man-meat it desired to gorge down it’s gullet.

  Jakub quaked as he held the arrow, unable to aim steady as his hands shook. Jorgen and Nora watched, cold and wet from the Balfold rain as the boy gripped tighter on the arrow, fear taking him. Jakub could feel the cold, wet dirt under his knees and the ground begun to quake with each giant step the creature drew closer.

  The giant beast caught the scent. Its stomach was grumbling wildly with hunger as it smelt Jakub’s sweat, drawing its eye to the bushes that they hid behind, watching, waiting. The creature hissed in a low voice, speeding his large body as it bounded towards the bush. Each step made the ground shake under the beast’s vast weight. Jakub was sweating more than ever before as it begun to charge, grasping the arrow tighter, and trying to aim. The creature moved too fast, unable to place the shot for a boy inexperienced to the beasts of Balfold.

  Jorgen positioned himself quietly behind Jakub and grasped a new arrow. He readied himself, concentrating calmly, taking aim at the creature. He closed his right eye and focused, pulling back on the bow
string tightly and aiming at the monster’s bloodshot eye as it charged. ‘Shoot it Jakub,’ Jorgen ordered sternly as the creature grew closer, so close it almost loomed over the bush. Jakub did not fire, his hands trembling. ‘Shoot it!’

  Jakub released the arrow. It soared through the bitter air, cutting the wind, and collided with thick skin. It had been a powerful shot, a shot that would have caused great damage to a man, but to the creatures like the Balfold troll, it barely left a mark on it’s tough skin. The arrow bounded off of the creature’s body and landed in the damp pine needles. The creature’s mouth turned up into a satisfied smile, the sounds of its gurgling stomach loud in the forest as it set sights upon its meal.

  It stretched its arm downwards, outstretching its fingers towards Jakub, ready to grasp him and throw his body into the creature’s yellowing mouth.

  Jorgen had the shot, and he let his arrow fly.

  He felt the feathers on the end of the arrow slip through his cut fingers, releasing it from the bow. It soared on the short distance, but Jorgen was strong and his pull on the string had been powerful. The arrow flew straight into the beast’s eye, puncturing through the centre, lodging itself in place. The creature begun to screech and scream as blood begun to pour endlessly from the arrow’s wound like a waterfall of crimson liquid, the creature trying to blink but the arrow blocking its path.

  Jorgen stood in the sloppy mud. He could hear the monster’s callous screams echoing through his head as he got to his feet, the beast flailing around in the forest in pain. Its giant body smacked into a tree, blind and disorientated, it’s body flailing to the floor.

  Nora watched calmly as Jorgen unsheathed his long sword. He walked through the mud to where the beast fell, composed and quiet, lifting his blade in the air. He swung, and he swung hard. The blade made contact with the creature’s neck, slicing through skin, flesh and bone in one powerful, fluid motion, a strike so strong that not even arrows could pierce the creature’s skin. The monster’s head fell to the wet ground in a bloody heap. The body quickly fell to the floor lifelessly, the beast’s limbs beginning to spasm as thick crimson fluid oozed rapidly from the stump on the neck.

  Jakub Krea leaped to his feet, his body a quiver. ‘What just happened?’ He shook.

  ‘Your arrow missed; if it were not for Jorgen, you would be troll food, crunched into a thousand pieces.’ Nora stated. ‘You are lucky he was here.’

  ‘Just take a deep breath,’ Jorgen said, trying to hide the mocking smile on his cheeks, the troll’s blood clinging to his skin. ‘Try not to think about the fact that you were almost eaten alive.’

  ‘I... I must leave these woods at once; this place is not safe.’ And then he ran as fast as his quivering legs could muster, disappearing from sight with his hand gripped tightly to the handle of his blade.

  Jorgen and Nora returned to Crow’s Keep with little haste, the trolls head tossed in a bloody satchel like a trophy. Nora would boast of Jorgen’s impressive kill to the Krea family, as she always did. Yet as they returned to the castle which had been built and carved into the side of a rocky mountain, riding through the cobblestone streets filled with farmers, blacksmiths and bakers, the atmosphere in the grand city had fallen, something that Jorgen and his beloved were yet to see, and quickly did they wonder who the people mourned. It quickly became apparent the moment Jorgen was called to meet with his father, Reidar Black and his brother Erik, alone in the presence of Lord Amund Krea, ruler of the Emerald Isles and the father to Jakub and Elinor Krea.

  Jorgen knew that Lord Amund Krea always held a lust in his eyes when he spoke of the throne. It was all the Lord of the Emerald Isles ever spoke of. The man had always dreamed of sitting his fat backside upon the bones of the old kings and Jorgen trusted him as little as he trusted Hakon Grey. Jorgen Black disliked – hated, even – the presence of the old Krea in his household, and even though his brother was to marry one himself, Amund’s youngest daughter, Elinor, Jorgen wasn’t certain he even trusted her. Although she was extraordinarily different from her power-hungry father, Jorgen knew Erik would still have to sleep with one eye open.

  Amund Krea had a silent distaste in his mouth for the Black family – Jorgen had decided – and it was only a matter of time before Amund would shatter the allegiance that had been forged between their two great Houses to place himself higher in the world of politics and kings. Although Amund had spoken no word of a betrayal to Jorgen’s family, he was certain the day would come – or perhaps Jorgen was just too drunk.

  Jorgen tried to smile convincingly at the sight of Amund Krea as he stood silently in his father’s study with a cup of fine wine in his old, withering hands. Quickly Reidar Black shot his eyes towards his eldest son. ‘I must bear you with some tragic news, my boy.’ Reidar said solemnly to Jorgen. ‘King Kodran is – I am sorry to say – dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ Jorgen spat, his heart pounding in his chest painfully. Although he felt no sorrow, he could barely believe the words – his father had spent years believing that Jorgen cared for the old king, unaware of what had happened to Jorgen in the north, and why he hatred Kodran. ‘Are you certain he’s dead?’

  His father nodded his head.

  ‘When did this happen? How?’ Jorgen’s body shook, disbelieving.

  Reidar Black handed a piece of rolled parchment to his son. Quickly Jorgen noticed the broken seal – red wax pressed into the shape of a fox – and his eyes landed upon the fine blank ink, a thousand words upon the paper. His eyes scanned the words with horror as Amund Krea spoke. Jorgen instantly recognised the hand who had written the words, none other than Andor Grey himself.

  ‘He was killed almost a fortnight ago.’ Amund Krea said bitterly as Jorgen read Andor’s words. ‘I received the news from a raven this morning.’

  ‘They say his throat was cut as he sat upon the throne of bones,’ Erik said, unbothered by the news. Erik’s words made Jorgen tremble, thinking back to the dream that had haunted him back in Tronenpoint, the sound of Ragnar’s voice, telling Jorgen of what was to come.

  ‘Kodran was murdered?’ Jorgen said with his mouth hung ajar, reading the letter, thinking back to his dream of Kodran on his throne with his throat sliced from ear to ear.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Reidar uttered distastefully.

  ‘No, this cannot be true,’ Jorgen stammered, absorbing each word that Andor had written in his own hand. Words that scared Jorgen jumped out at him; murder, treason, fugitive. ‘This says that Goran killed him...this says he cut his throat...there were witnesses, people who saw...Goran would never do this. He loved his father more than any. Andor is writing lies.’

  A thousand more thoughts spiralled through his perplexed mind. He tore the parchment to pieces in his rage and bewilderment and fear of his nightmare coming true. Although he despised Goran and Kodran more than any, Jorgen knew the truth. He knew that Goran would never harm his beloved father. He knew that Andor had reason to hate Kodran more than any man. Jorgen had always thought of himself as an honourable man, and the lies Andor wrote brought him frustration and confusion when his dream had become a frightening reality. He was suddenly laced with fury at his friend in the south; Andor had brandished the knife and taken his father’s life. He put the blame upon the heir to the throne of bones. He promised Jorgen that he would not take Goran’s life, but had made no mention of Kodran. Jorgen suddenly felt a fool, a drunken fool.

  ‘Andor Grey has taken the throne for himself,’ Amund Krea confirmed Jorgen’s suspicions. ‘He is the King of Askavold now.’

  ‘And where is Goran?’ Jorgen asked curiously, dropping the shreds of parchment to the stony floor. ‘The letter said he ran, but Andor Grey’s words cannot be trusted, not now.’ He promised me, and he betrayed that, Jorgen thought, and Abigail, she betrayed me also…my own sister…

  ‘Goran cannot be found,’ Reidar said remorsefully, pouring another full glass of rich red wine. ‘He has not been seen since that night. All we have been told is that he has fled the capi
tal with his accomplices, but that is something we cannot easily believe. I’m sorry my son, but prepare yourself for the worst; it is easy to blame a murder upon a man who no longer breathes, a man who cannot defend himself.’

  Jorgen took a deep, chilling breath. He was certain that the new King of Askavold was capable of murdering his own brother. If Andor was capable of murdering his own father, then it surely meant that Goran had met a similar fate, especially after all they had discussed, what Jorgen thought was just a fantasy, not a true plot of murder. Jorgen took a deep breath and decided to keep it to himself – he hadn’t even told his father of Goran’s betrayal to Abigail.

  Amund Krea stepped forward into the study, angry eyes locked onto Reidar with determination. The Lord of the Emerald Isles slammed his wine glass down onto the table and raised his voice furiously. ‘We must take action now, Reidar. We cannot stand by whilst a treasonous murderer sits upon the throne!’

  ‘Do you speak of rebellion, Lord Krea?’

  ‘Aye, I do.’ Lord Amund Krea was hot-headed. This was a well-known fact, that the lord was driven by anger. The old man could barely contain his eagerness. Jorgen believed it was the perfect excuse, the perfect opportunity, for Amund Krea to rally an army to take the capital of Askavold for himself. Jorgen scoffed quietly as Amund continued to shout passionately. ‘With our armies combined we could take Tronenpoint, take the throne–’

  ‘–We know very little at this moment,’ Reidar said sternly, cutting off Amund’s words. ‘We cannot let anger and sorrow drive us at this time, not until we know more. My daughter resides in the south. I shall write to Abigail and learn some more truths before we even discuss what action to take. Andor Grey has demanded fealty from the lords of the six kingdoms and a continued friendship with us in the west, and we must know more before we comply.’