by T L Drew
Rollo Grey shamefully nodded his head.
‘Don’t let this scare you,’ Hakon said, gazing into the boy’s eyes, finding his skeletal hand upon the child’s dark hair. ‘You must watch and toughen yourself. You will see much of these things as you grow. A man does not fear death. A man brings it.’
‘That’s enough,’ Margot whispered to Hakon, seeing the fright in her son’s eyes. ‘He can go with his sister. There is much time for him to grow accustomed to such things.’
‘Very well,’ Hakon agreed, clicking his skeletal fingers to the slaves behind him. ‘Take the boy away from here, to join his sister, where the children will be sheltered away from what they must see, because their mother is too soft on them.’
Margot’s eyes narrowed at the self-proclaimed king as her son was led away by the slaves. Hakon’s lips turned into a smile as he gazed at her with his last remaining eye. She felt herself biting her tongue between her teeth, drawing her brown eyes away from Hakon Grey and back towards the pits, her head twisting downwards to stare at the few men that remained, until only one man was left, swathed in blood from head to toe. ‘Now is your moment.’ Margot uttered to Hakon passed her full, rosy lips. The old man’s smile grew.
Hakon Grey rose to his feet, clapped the victor of the previous fight, and shouted to the crowd for silence, his voice sly like the devil’s. ‘Ladies and gentlemen of Tronenpoint, may I have your attention! I wish to firstly congratulate Arron Ansfrid, for his victory in this first round, but promise me when I tell you that this is far from over! We have a real show for you tonight!’ The crowd cheered at his words, desperate to see bloodshed. ‘The man who fights this hour is a man you all know well, a man who once served my late brother, Kodran, and fought beside my son Thorbjorn Grey in battle. He served at Andor Grey’s side. A once great and noble knight, the second in command of the king’s guard. A man who has long been loyal to the crown, who lived to protect it, but now he is a traitor – this is my city now, it belongs to me, and Queen Margot of House Rose, and today I present him to you to fight for his life in the pits, for refusing to bow to his new king and queen,’ the crowd began to boo and hiss for the traitor, Hakon’s smiling growing vast, enjoying every moment. Margot noticed how her father at her side lingered on Hakon’s every word, as she did. ‘So today he fights for his life, and if he survives, he will remain in a cell until next year, where he shall fight again, and so on and so forth, until he dies within these walls. Ladies and gentlemen of the south, I present to you the traitor, the second in command of the king’s guard...Nazir!’
The pits were empties, the bodies dragged away and the iron gates were opened. The booing began, wilder than ever, screaming traitor. A man was pushed into the open snow, his body barely clothed, Nazir’s skin bronze and bruised, cut and bloody, his hair black but thick with sweat and blood. Nazir was barely clothed, without armour, only rags upon his legs and his feet bare and cold on the snow, a collar made from leather strapped over his bruised neck. His fingernails were void from his hands. His body was riddled with shallow stab wounds. There were holes in his feet from where Hakon had hammered in the rusting old nails.
Then the iron gates on the other side of the arena were opened, fifteen men ready to battle, their bodies clad in full iron armour and large weapons in their hands. Margot watched with cruel satisfaction as she saw them, the sigils upon their breast plates of their Houses; the two-headed bear of House Fletcher, the flaming boar of House Payne, and the three spiders of House Webb all stood out to her eyes like a sore thumb. Southern lord’s sons, the fathers who had knelt to Hakon and Margot, prepared to die to please their new self-proclaimed king and queen.
However young Nazir was, a youthful man with only nineteen years behind him, he was the favourite to win the fight against fifteen men verses only one. A young man who although very tall, he was slenderer than the other men that opposed him and appeared to be twice as strong. Nazir had spent years as a boy learning to fight, until eventually he became a knight under Thorbjorn Grey’s command. Nazir was a close friend of Thorbjorn, and his strongest and most skilled warrior in his army, other than Thorbjorn himself. The people of Tronenpoint knew Nazir’s strength and ability for a boy so young – it was why he was given the duty of protecting the king, even though the king was nowhere to be seen.
Nazir’s hands were carefully unchained and a rusty old sword was forced into his bruised hands. The guards disappeared behind the iron gates with haste. The fifteen men readied themselves before taking hesitant steps closer to the young boy, all perplexed that only one man was fighting against them. They were all shielded in thick suits of armour and gifted with the finest weaponry, yet the young man wore no protection from the blades that they branded.
Hakon shouted a command, and the fight begun. The first man leapt forwards towards Nazir, and quickly did the rest follow.
Steel collided with steel. Steel collided with skin. Nazir’s blade sliced through flesh and bone, one man after the other. Within the first five seconds, the man from House Webb fell to his knees, a blade caught in the side of his neck from Nazir’s rusting weapon. Within a blink of an eye, Nazir had disarmed three men and drew his blade across their skin, one man’s intestines oozing from his stomach and splattering upon the snowy floor in a bloody heap before his body collapsed into the cold snow. A second man’s head rolled across the blood-stained snow before Margot could register what had even transpired. She noticed the man’s head belonged to the man from House Payne. Quickly the man from House Fletcher fell too when Nazir’s blade pierced through his face.
Nazir swung the iron blade around so quickly that it was a blur to Margot’s eyes. She leaned closer and closer to the arena, staring down at her captive with enchantment and fascination as Nazir almost danced, his blades slicing the limbs from one man to the next with ease.
Margot had seen him fight before, when she had taken the city on that first day of Andor’s departure from Tronenpoint, but in that moment, she had more men than he could face; fifteen men was nothing compared to Nazir’s skill, despite the wounds that plagued his body. She almost hoped secretly that he might survive.
A man tried to swing at Nazir from behind, but the boy was too quick; he spun around on his heel in the snow and swished his blade, cutting through the air, and his iron sword sliced across the man’s throat in one fluid movement, his body collapsing to the floor in a bloody puddle.
Nazir’s face was splattered with blood, but he still did not he show any emotion, except for the emptiness in his emerald eyes. Another man fell crashing to the snow with a leg sliced away from his body. When the rest of the men were dead, Nazir turned his gaze to the legless man and plunged his blade into his eye, piercing his brain, and ending his suffering. Without a single cut or scratch upon Nazir’s body other than the wounds of Hakon and Mercer’s torture, he finally stood still as he became the only living man inside of the pits, and dropped his weapon upon the snowy floor. He breathed heavily with sweat dripping down his forehead despite the bitter chill as the crowd began to hiss in disproval. Nazir stood silently among the fifteen corpses of men he had slain so effortlessly without the blink of an eye. Not even a minute had passed and already fifteen bodies lay bloody and still in the red snow.
‘Well, I am truly surprised, after all we did to him,’ Hakon whispered the words to Margot as the crowd booed and hissed.
‘As am I,’ she admitted as Nazir disappeared behind iron gates, being returned to his grimy cell by dozens of soldiers, the bodies still sprawled across the arena floor.
‘He’s alive and he still won’t talk,’ Hakon said out loud, almost as though he spoke to himself. ‘There is one more thing we could do, to make him useful.’
‘What do you suggest?’ Margot asked, her curiosity spiked as the crowd demanded more blood.
‘We set him free – or at least let him believe he has escaped – and he’ll lead us to Jorgen Black, and then we will take what we want.’
THORBJORN
Wate
r crashed against his pounding head repetitively, an endless cycle of bitter air taken from him by white horses crashing over his face, stopping the breath from filling his aching chest, and battering his head with the power of the wintry water. Thorbjorn did not know how long he had been drifting, floating upon the frozen sea, slipping in and out of consciousness, feeling wet feathers underneath his fingers as he grasped onto them for his life. It felt like days, maybe more before he was pried from the waves.
Thorbjorn was dreaming about Aela as he gained consciousness, even as he felt his hands gripping onto her silvery feathers; she had been gifted to him by Ragnar Lienhart, a last gift before Ragnar’s brutal demise at the hands of Thorbjorn’s disgraceful uncle. Ragnar had tamed her with the power of his ring for the young boy he wished was his own; Thorbjorn remembered the first time he had laid eyes upon Aela, a small griffin at the time, her feathers the colour of molten silver and her eyes as bronze as coin. Ragnar stood by her in the Tronenpoint courtyard, running his rough fingertips over her feathers, smiling as a young Thorbjorn had walked through the gates to see the man he admired more than any other. Ragnar had grown a beard that winter, longer than Kodran’s and braided dark down his broad chin. His eyes were an inhuman blue, like ice floating upon the surface of the frozen sea. ‘Here, boy.’ The old king had smiled at Thorbjorn, pushing the bird towards the nine-year-old. ‘She’s a good girl. She’ll look after you.’
‘Is she for me?’ Thorbjorn had asked, staring at the bird. She was the most beautiful creature Thorbjorn had ever seen, her feathers shining in the light like the steel of a newly forged blade, her eyes glowing like copper marbles.
Ragnar’s lips turned into a smile, his hand placed upon the bird’s feathers, his voice deep and powerful. ‘She’s yours. Her name is Aela; you’ll become a knight of the sky when you are of age, like I became. There is no greater joy in this world than taking flight, feeling the wind in your hair, gazing down at the world.’
‘Will I ride a dragon one day, like you?’ Thorbjorn asked as he ruffled the bird’s feathers.
Ragnar laughed, messing the hair upon the boy’s tousled head. ‘Perhaps one day, but for now, Aela will be your wings.’
Thorbjorn missed him. Thorbjorn knew Andor missed him more. He had thought at the time that Aela was the perfect gift; Thorbjorn’s mother had been a lady of House Ari of the Arus before her death, where the Ari’s bore the sigil of the griffin upon their banners and breastplates. It seemed only fitting that Ragnar gifted the boy with a griffin of his own not long after she had taken ill. Thorbjorn had always been grateful to the king for his compassion. It only felt as though a few months had passed him by since Ragnar Lienhart gifted him with the beautiful bird. He thought of the old king with admiration, but his thoughts quickly turned to the execution. He had been sat next to a twelve-year-old Andor Grey. The boy understood what was happening. Andor had been too young to witness such a thing, forced to watch as Kodran drew his long sword and swung it deafeningly into Ragnar’s neck.
Ragnar had been bound with Imbane chains as his body wrestled to free himself, to turn into the great wolf. Ragnar’s inhuman eyes had been on Andor Grey when he’d died, the young boy crying as he was forced to watch. Thorbjorn had seen the look in the old king’s eyes; he was not frightened, but trying to look brave and strong for the twelve-year-old who was forced to watch, a boy Ragnar loved.
‘Why did Uncle Kodran kill him?’ Thorbjorn had screamed to his father as a nineteen-year-old boy, comforting a young Andor, after Ragnar’s head had been struck from his body and stripped of skin and flesh so that his skull could be mounted upon Kodran’s new throne. Hakon drew a deep breath.
‘He did a lot of bad things,’ Hakon placed a hand on Thorbjorn’s young shoulder, trying to justify what they had done. ‘Ragnar used his power as king to spend a lot of time with many a lord’s women. He bedded many wives.’
‘And he deserved to die for it?’ Thorbjorn asked, knowing his father’s words to be nothing but an excuse. The truth barely slipped from Hakon’s thinning lips.
‘No one wanted a cursed man ruling over the six kingdoms anymore, son.’ Hakon said truthfully, letting a deep sigh from his lips as Thorbjorn’s arm tightened around the twelve-year-old boy. ‘What is done is done; it is best not to dwell on such a thing any further.’
Thorbjorn had always been angry at his father when he came to realise that Hakon Grey had fought in the war against the Lienhart’s. Thorbjorn had run to the stables that night and cried into the soft feathers of his bird, although it was something he would not admit to anyone. Kodran had tried to have the bird killed, as Aela served as a memory to the Lienhart’s, but it was one thing that Hakon would never allow Kodran to take from his boy.
Aela had been Thorbjorn’s last reminder that Ragnar Lienhart ever existed. His legend had become a forbidden fable in the history of the six kingdoms. Kodran had made certain of it, with the exception of Thorbjorn’s beautiful bird. The cursed men – who had created a powerful dynasty – were no longer welcome upon their own soil. Thorbjorn was proud of his cousin for doing what was right by the family of Ragnar. Thorbjorn hoped one day that the Grey’s and the Lienhart’s could be allies once more – in truth, he prayed for it – and he begged the gods it would come.
Thorbjorn found his mind wandering foggily about the past when he remembered the arrow piercing Aela’s skin as he continued to slip in and out of bewildered consciousness. Barely a thing made sense to his clouded mind. He woke to water crashing into his cheeks, and then he slipped back into darkness, then awoke back in the sea. His thoughts drew back to the night that Goran ordered his new army to shoot him from the skies. He tried to open his eyes, but his head was thumping with agony. His thoughts were confused. He slipped back into the darkness, and when he awoke, there was no water anymore. He wondered where he was; Thorbjorn could feel hard wood underneath him, cold and wet, water soaking his clothing. He could smell the sea. There was no light flooding him, only darkness, cold and bleak. Thorbjorn felt sharp pinches on his face.
The Sky Knight awoke upon a ship, his eyes blinking wildly as shouting coursed through his ears. He could scarcely move his head. The hard wood of the deck was cold and wet upon his cheek, his face pressed into the splintering wood. There were feet passing by his foggy eyes. Footsteps moved towards him, each thud on the deck coursing painfully through Thorbjorn’s ears, his splintering headache increasing. ‘He’s not moving!’ A man shouted, kicking a boot lightly into Thorbjorn’s still leg. ‘It’s the Sky Knight, captain!’
Floating. All he could remember was floating. The waves had crashed against his body. The water had filled him. ‘Are you sure?’ Another man said. ‘By the gods, it’s him, and his bird. Send a raven for the king! If he survives, we’ll be rich men!’
‘He’s still not moving!’
‘Hit his chest,’ Thorbjorn heard a deep, rough voice. ‘There will be much water inside of him.’
A second kick came to Thorbjorn’s body. This time a boot smacked into his chest. He felt a man’s hand hitting his bruised back. He coughed water from his lungs and found his body flipping onto his stomach. There was salt on his tongue and his mouth was dry. His throat burnt like hot coals.
The salty water ran down his cracked lips and onto the deck. He felt a cold hand comfortingly on his back as he coughed the water from his lungs and breathed in the icy air. ‘You are the luckiest man in all of Askavold,’ the voice spoke, hand still upon Thorbjorn’s back. ‘Who knows how long you have been drifting. You’re lucky we saw you, floating out there, grasping onto that bloody bird for dear life – if not for her feathers, we might not have seen you. Don’t you worry now, rest, and soon you’ll be home.’
Thorbjorn couldn’t speak. His body was quaking and limp. He was cold, so cold that he could barely think. ‘Take him below deck,’ the familiar voice gave an order. ‘He is frozen to the bone. He will have a thirst and a hunger on him. Have his wounds tended to and send that bloody raven for the k
ing.’
‘Of course, captain.’ A second man uttered.
He felt himself being carried down into darkness. The ship was swaying, making his stomach churn unpleasantly. Thorbjorn was in agony. The pain eased when he was given fresh water; it passed his lips with a sudden relief, but then he was suddenly desperate for more. A man gave him more water, and he drank the lot. Thorbjorn noticed the man was wearing a fisherman’s clothes and he stank of raw fish. Thorbjorn didn’t know how much time passed him by that he was below the decks recovering from his ordeal. After a while he was able to keep food down and his wounds began to heal. His thoughts kept trailing back to Aela. Over the next few days, Thorbjorn Grey slipped in and out of consciousness – and when he woke on the third day, he was still below deck, but quickly noticed he was not on the same ship as when he drifted into unconsciousness. ‘What’s going on? Who are you?’ Thorbjorn snapped as he noticed a young man before him he had never seen, and the knight fell into a sudden panic. His heart began to race but his body was too weak to pull himself from his bed.
‘Calm yourself, my lord, you’re safe, on the king’s ship, the Thorn Maiden.’
‘Thorn Maiden?’ Thorbjorn uttered under his cold breath, his eyes finding the young man’s armour branded with the fox of House Grey, and his heart began to slow. Is it true? Am I safe? He thought wildly, his mind still clouded and disorientated as though he had spent weeks drinking gallons of ale. In truth, the Thorn Maiden was his father’s ship, stationed outside of his home of Whitehold, not the king’s. He wondered if his father was here. He doubted it; his father never truly loved Thorbjorn like he wished him to.
‘Aye sir, the Thorn Maiden.’
‘Is he awake?’ Thorbjorn heard a familiar voice coming from above deck as the boat gently swayed left and right with the calm motion of the sea. It was a voice that filled Thorbjorn with joy he thought he would never feel again and a deep sense of relief. ‘I wish to be left alone with my cousin.’
