by T L Drew
Hakon knew he had been lucky to survive such a thing. His wounds healed, but he could never forget what happened on the battlefield that dark day, even though he lived to fight again against the old king. He fought in the final battle at the swirling sands in the desert north, not far from the North Rock palace where the cursed king ruled, against Ragnar Lienhart’s cursed army and the tribesmen that followed them. He had seen the dragon shot from the sky as it came tumbling down into the northern sands with cries of agony and despair, shrieking as the hot sand swirled around them, catching in their eyes and dry mouths. He had thrown one of the many spears that had hit Drax the Dread. Mercer had been there with him, when the king was captured. They had watched together as the king fell, and how his people fell with him, like a broken hive collapsing into the hot sands. If it were not for the Imbane Ore – the greatest weakness of the cursed men – mankind would have never triumphed, their weapons crafted from the black-green metal.
Mercer’s voice lowered as he saw his commander deep in thought. ‘You raped and tortured your way through the Great War – they were the good old days, before Kodran took victory.’
‘Many men did the same as us.’ Hakon remembered what he’d done. He and Mercer were of the same kind; both were older, selfish men, with a sick love of violence, gold and power. Mercer and Hakon shared a similar past. Hakon had tortured the old king back in Tronenpoint and raped the cursed women who had been captured before their executions. Mercer-One-Eye had done worse. He had captured one of Ragnar’s wives, ripped her infant child from her breast, and planted a dagger into the child before his mother’s eyes before killing her, too. Ragnar had three wives, but Hakon couldn’t even remember the name of the one he had witnessed Mercer execute in cold blood, and her infant son.
Mercer grinned at the remembrance. ‘Does your nephew know of the things you have done?’
‘No, but he knows well of you.’ Hakon spoke with certainty, thinking of Andor. ‘The boy thinks fondly of me.’
The old man knew what Mercer was getting at; although Hakon’s nephew had done dark things, Andor Grey always did what he thought was right, for the greater good. Hakon knew that Andor would never lay a hand upon a woman without her consent, would never torture a man for his own pleasure, that he would never kill a man without a good reason. He hadn’t butchered infants, like Mercer had done. Hakon Grey had done all of those things, and he and Mercer both knew that if the King of Askavold knew of his uncle’s true nature, his true intentions, he might think twice about letting the old man roam freely around the six kingdoms of Askavold. Although Andor’s love for his uncle would never change, Mercer was worried. Hakon could see it, as clear as a summer’s day in the Arus.
Mercer’s voice grew darker as they rode on. ‘Andor will kill you when he finds out what we’re truly doing in the western lands.’ Mercer-One-Eye hissed at his commander as they rode hard on the king’s path. ‘The king will gut you and feed you to his wolves, like he did to his father.’
‘My nephew won’t find out until after the job is done,’ Hakon was certain, his thighs chafing and raw from the hard ride. ‘And if he does, the God’s know he’ll kill any other man before he dares hurt me.’
‘And you’re certain of that, old fox?’
‘I know my nephew better than any man who came before.’
‘The king murdered his own father. You say you saw it. How do you know he won’t do the same to you? Andor Grey is a loose cannon, ready to fire, or so they say.’ Mercer-One-Eye glanced at his commander through the snow with the one haunting green eye the mercenary had left.
‘The boy had no love for his father.’ Hakon said with certainty. ‘He has love for me.’
‘And you could have taken that crown for yourself; the other boy is likely dead by now, and Andor could have shared a similar fate, if you had taken your chance wisely.’ Mercer pressed on.
Hakon released a quiet sigh from his lips. He had thought about taking the crown for his own countless times. He had dreamed of that bony crown upon his bald head, sat upon the throne, a dark-haired woman at his side, calling herself his queen. ‘I do not have the love of the people, like Andor does. If I were to kill my brother, Kodran, and both of his sons, I would be hung for treason. Yet when my nephew murders his own father, no one cares, because Kodran was a bastard who deserved his fate, and they love Andor. If I killed Andor to take the throne, I would be a dead man. Although Andor’s brother deserved whatever he got, Andor doesn’t deserve it. He may not deserve the crown, but he doesn’t deserve death.’
‘Andor has the love of the people...but you could have their fear, and fear is more powerful than love, believe me.’ Mercer said, his voice barely audible as they rode onwards, their mounts leaving the battlefield with ease and treading closer and closer to the borders of Balfold where soon the snow would end, and they would be met with sheer grey-black mountains that disappeared into the clouds and endless green forests of pine trees.
The old man thought about Mercer’s words long and hard as they rode onwards, closer to the green lands, further from the snow. Hakon Grey and his army of cruel mercenaries passed through the small mining town of Svart Sommer and stopped to rest and regain strength before they neared the dark forest that surrounded the stone city of Solvstone. He didn’t think much of Svart Sommer or Solvstone, for they were not Tronenpoint. Tronenpoint was his home, and would be until his death. Although the old man could see the beauty in the stony city of Solvstone, with its lush green pine trees, beautifully crafted buildings, and the breath-taking castle of Crow’s Keep built into the mountain side, Hakon Grey disliked any village, town or city that was not Tronenpoint, or plagued with snow. Hakon hadn’t been to the great city of Solvstone since long before the Great War, where his silver tongue had convinced Reidar Black to join the fight for the mortal men and their desire to rule over those who had ruled Askavold since man had first set foot upon Askavold soil.
His men were in awe as they saw Crow’s Keep over the tops of the trees after the long ride. Hakon was scarcely bothered by the beauty of it. He bit his tongue, and listened to the whispers of the ring, and thought cruelly of what was to come.
GORAN
Goran could feel the death lingering on the sombre air. It shrouded him, like a snow storm that refused to seize. It was the smell that surrounded him which made him think of death, reminding him of a time he had found a dead, rotting wolf in the woods on his hunt, maggots crawling over the decaying flesh and a swam of flies surrounding the wolf’s being. The smell on Solitude reminded him of that wolf, but worse, a smell he couldn’t shake. It clung to the land, and refused to let go. It is the smell of dead men, in their hundreds, Goran Grey knew.
Moments after Goran’s feet touched the desolate land, he was roughly dragged by white-eyed men to the southern tower of Solitude, with cold chains around his beaten, bloody wrists. His body was showered by cold rain and his feet were coated in thick, wet mud as they slid across the Solitude soil. He no longer had desperate sights on his squire, Chauncey, as the slaves were roughly dragged down the beaten muddy track through the thick dark forests. The smell of fresh pine was replaced with the overwhelming scent of death and decay.
‘Please, I beg you–’ Goran heard a desperate slave in front of his being, pleading for release as they were heaved through the pine. The Afterling guard raised his large, powerful fist and crashed it into the man’s stomach with a loud resonance of pain. The slave dared not finish his words.
‘–There will be no talking! Next man to speak loses his tongue!’ The white-eyed guard screamed at him, and the rest of the slaves, his golden whip still holstered.
Upon entering the first floor of the ebony tower, his fine but dirty clothes he had left the south wearing were stripped violently from his body, leaving him exposed in only tattered rags around his hips. The cold instantly bit at his skin, yet it was nothing compared to the harsh chill of the southern kingdom he came from. Yet Goran barely noticed the lack of clothing h
iding his body from the coldness; he was focused frightfully upon the confines of the southern tower of Solitude, a dark place, open and eerie, the ebony marble floors washed with crimson as though the first floor of the haunting tower had been flooded. His feet were submerged in a puddle of blood, feeling it around his toes. He wondered about the fate of the man whose blood washed around his feet. Gods help me, he thought as his eyes fell to the concave ceiling of the first floor, spying the dead, hanging from the thick, ebony rafters, blood dripping from the high ceiling. Goran closed his mouth and looked away.
Goran kept his ring hidden in his mouth as they stole his fine furs and his expensive cottons; he would not allow them to take that from him too. The slaves were not permitted to speak unless spoken to, so no man would know of what he hid inside of his painful mouth. Yet the burn of the ring hurt his swollen mouth more than it already stung. Although he had never felt the burn much before he had arrived on Solitude Island, Goran wondered if it was all in his mind; he had barely drunk a mouthful of water since the day before. Perhaps it played tricks on his mind. He was suddenly dreaming of water passing his dry lips, rather than the fear.
Barely clothed and cold to the bone, he had had been dragged deeper into the southern tower when the slaves had all been stripped, where his head had been roughly sheered. They had cut his scalp a few times, and blood tricked down the back of his neck and his forehead. Long black curls fell to the ebony floor. No time had passed before they branded his skin with a hot iron, a mark upon his body of a giant A, property of the Afterling. They marked him on his wrist. He’d tried not to scream when the hot iron scolded his skin, biting down on the ring concealed in his mouth instead. His bite on the ring seemed to ease his agony, and although he had been dealt great pain on his first day upon Solitude, it was the lightest of that to come, and Goran knew it.
He was not alone, but he felt isolated and humiliated. It was called Solitude Island for a reason. He had never felt so vulnerable, even as his brother cut his father’s throat.
Goran dared not to make a sound when they poured a pungent liquid over his branding, although the pain of the fluid on his burn was worse than when they made the burn itself. His eyes leaked water, and blood still ran down his forehead.
After his head had been shaved and his wrist branded by their hot irons, Goran and the slaves were heaved one by one towards a narrow, twisting staircase. They obeyed without thought when the Afterling ordered them to ascend the steps deeper into the tower. He moved upwards one step at a time until Goran realised he had been ushered onto the fourth floor of the tall, dark tower. The prince had no time to think as the Afterling rushed the slaves towards a dark room, littered with bodies behind iron bars and pushed them into dank cells, locking the doors behind them. Goran was kicked by a hard boot into his cell. He grunted in pain as his exposed body hit the stone floor, laden with dirt. His cell door was swung closed aggressively behind him and locked with a master key. One Afterling guard spat at him through the bars, landing at his bloody feet.
When Goran came to a stand, rubbing the soreness where the boot had smacked against the back of his raw thighs, he realised he wasn’t alone in the cell. Only one man was locked inside with him, his back turned towards the battered prince, a filthy rag tied around his hips.
There was only a window and straw in his cell. No bucket or bed. Just damp straw, rotting, some stained with dry blood. The stench was nothing like he had ever smelt, his gut twisting. The smell of crap and piss, he decided. So, this is home now, he thought with great sorrow and despair, coupled by trepid fear. His thoughts came back to his children and his lover as the smell of Solitude filled him.
The man who shared his cell shot Goran a brief glance; the prince could see in the man’s eyes that he knew who he was, the prince, the rightful heir to the throne of Askavold. Goran tried to catch his eye. His cellmate was a southern man – he could tell from his icy skin, dark hair and light eyes. The slave knew he was in front of the prince, but he appeared not to care. The man was starving to death, his body skeletal and brittle and his back was ridden with lashes. His thighs were bruised and cut. On Solitude, the presence of a prince meant nothing. Food, water and rest were all that mattered. The thoughts of freedom mattered more so. The young slave gazed away from the prince, his hollow eyes gazing out of the barred window. ‘Prince Goran Grey,’ the young slave said, his eyes still gazing from the window. ‘I never thought I would see a man such as yourself in a place like this in my lifetime.’
‘Neither did I.’ Goran whispered, feeling the ring placed between his tooth and the inside of his cheek, hot like fire as he spoke.
‘My name is Cyr Larkin, not that it matters.’
It doesn’t matter, Goran thought as he took the ring quietly from his lips and placed it back on his finger. It burned him again, but it was not like the pain of his branded wrist. The prince felt unexplainably stronger with it on his finger, like he could go without food or water for days. ‘They’ll kill you for that,’ he heard his cellmate’s brittle voice, the eyes of the slave briefly landing on Goran.
‘Then they won’t find out.’ Goran said surely, placing his free palm over the top of his hand, covering the ring from sight. The young, starving Cyr said no words, returning his gaze to the island outside their window. ‘What are you staring at?’ Goran asked.
The man granted Goran no response. The prince moved his painful body forwards towards the window with curiosity. The slave was fixated on something. As Goran drew closer to the barred window, a cold breeze gusting into their cell, he could smell smoke and decay that rose through the pine trees in the hammering rain.
Goran stared across the dark plains from the small opening in the tower and towards the forest that blanketed Solitude, his eyes resting on a thick black smoke that rose high into the grey sky as the clouds continued to burst with heavy rain. The sun was beginning to set over the island, but the smell of death lingered off of the smoke, a raging fire blazing from behind the trees in a small clearing. The man could smell the decay, the burning flesh and the thick smoke as piles of the dead were burnt in the dark evening. ‘Do they burn the dead?’ Goran asked a young man. ‘I can smell death on this island, since the very moment the ship came to a stop.’ Goran uttered to the thin boy. He decided that his cellmate had been on Solitude Island for longer than most.
‘They call it the last stop,’ Cyr uttered with a dry voice, his dull eyes following Goran’s to the smoke. ‘The final resting place, the end of the painful journey on Solitude Island, the giant fire that burns the dead once they start to decay,’ The man – boy – uttered, eyes unblinking as he stared with a callous remembrance. ‘They leave the bodies piled upon one another in a mound as high the trees until they begin to rot so badly that you can smell the dead from this tower. The crows will not even touch them. Only the ones they don’t eat end up there.’
‘Eat?’ Goran’s eyes widened.
‘Food is scarce,’ the slave struggled to speak, his throat dry. ‘Everyone must eat what they must, or burn on the last stop.’
The prince said nothing. His gut twisted and the slave drew his eyes from the window, meeting with Goran’s. ‘We will all end up in that pile, one day or another, or in the belly of the hungry.’
‘Not I,’ Goran said surely, still clinging to hope. ‘I will not die here.’
‘That is what they all say.’
‘I have a debt to repay, and I’m not going to leave this life until I do.’ Goran drew his eyes away from the smoke that rose high in the dark sky above the tops of the giant trees, thinking of the father he wished to avenge, of the brother he would have to kill.
He told himself he wouldn’t end up on the pile of the dead, his corpse burnt on the mound of the unlucky. He told himself he would leave the island and kill all who had wronged him. His first night on Solitude Island was filled with hope.
Goran told himself again and again that soon he would be free, that soon vengeance would be his to take, but as
the days went by, Goran no longer believed his own words.
JORGEN
The cries of his bird had become deafening with each step closer the carriage drew to the Crow’s Keep.
‘It appears Andor Grey has decided to pay my father a visit,’ Jorgen Black uttered bitterly to Nora under his breath, scoffing from the balcony of Solvstone’s mountainside castle as the Grey banners of the white fox were carried through Reidar Black’s city by men clad in shining steel armour. The soldiers pushed their way through the narrow, twisting streets, past clay and stone houses nestled on the edge of the lake and the dark forest that surrounded the city, past farmers, butchers and blacksmiths, lased with fear at the sight of the king’s soldiers escorting a carriage through the cobblestone streets. He silently cursed to the Gods for bringing the new king to his home, despite Andor Grey’s years of friendship. ‘If Andor has brought his uncle with him, then I would rather fuck a thousand diseased whores than meet with Hakon Grey.’ Jorgen spat to Nora by his side. Jorgen was twisted with anger and pity towards the new king at the thought of Andor Grey slicing Kodran’s throat as he sat upon his throne, Hakon Grey allowing it to happen. His anger had clouded him, and Goran Grey was nowhere to be found. He was torn between his love of Andor Grey and what was honourable. Killing a king was not honourable, even though Jorgen could see why it was justified, in Andor’s mind as well as his own. In truth, he was furious that Andor and Abigail had broken their promise to him, to forget about all they had planned. Although they had told him of their plotting to murder Goran, they had mentioned no words of taking Kodran’s life, however much the old man may have deserved death for all he had done.
‘Charming words my love.’ Nora’s copper eyes rolled.
Jorgen grinned down at his lover before once more his face fell into seriousness. ‘I wonder if Andor truly comes to my home. I very much doubt such a thing, not now that he is the King of Askavold.’
