And then, in my ear, where no one else can hear: “I know it’s too much to ask for forgiveness, so I won’t dishonor myself by asking. I don’t deserve it. Rexasena has already started to punish me for my crimes, and I know she will continue when this mortal frame passes into the next life. But, you must know how devastated I am by what I did. I regretted it the second you disappeared into the wild. I’ve been so horrible to you, and it wasn’t until I let my own flesh and blood meet death that I realized what I’ve become.” She pulls back, rests her hands on my shoulders. “I will try to stop this. I will tell your father everything. You don’t need to go into battle. You can’t.”
And then she’s pulling away from me, waiting before interrupting the conversation Soren and my father are having.
I don’t know what is happening. Did the moon rise this morning instead of the sun? Have fish grown legs and crawled on land? Where is my mother and who has replaced her?
I was gone … over three months. Could my beautiful, horrible mother really change in that time? I don’t trust it. Not one bit. She’s going to have to do more than cry on my shoulder. But she’s offering to make everything right—to tell my father the truth.
“Wait!” I say, forcing her back to me. “Mother, you can’t. I need to carry on with this fight.”
“No, you never should have been issued a mattugr. I saw that boy sabotage your test. I’m going to fix it, Rasmira. I swear it.”
“Don’t, please. I’m asking you to wait.”
Her already frail body seems to shrink further. “Why?”
“Because I am ready to face the god. He has been a plague upon our people, and I believe I can end it all. Today. No more Payments. No more worrying about the god who lurks in the wild. No more starving children.”
“But—”
“If you truly regret what you’ve done and wish to make things right with me, you will abide by my wishes.”
She licks her cracked lips. “I do, and I will.”
“Good. Now please, I need some distance from you.”
“Whatever you need.” She disappears behind my father’s shoulder.
By the goddess, what was that?
My heart is throbbing within my chest, and my mind is turning over the conversation again and again.
“Are you all right?” Irrenia asks.
“How long has she been like this?” I ask, pointing to Mother.
“It started just after you left. She won’t take any of the treatments I try to give her.”
I can’t deal with this. Not now. Not when so much is riding on today. Not when I keep wondering if I’ve made the right choice.
Should I have let her tell Father the truth and call the whole thing off?
No.
The word is absolute, leaving no room to question it. I’ve challenged the god. There is no taking that back. Regardless of whether my mattugr is lifted or not, he knows I’m alive now. He will look for me, might even punish my village for my challenge if he learns where I’m from. I have to see this through.
I start toward the center of the clearing. It’s dawn. Peruxolo should be here already. But just like he does with the village leaders during the Payment, he is making me wait.
Soren follows after me silently. There is nothing more to be said until this is done. Iric falls into step with us, leaving Aros to stand with his parents.
We stop in the center of the clearing, in the grooves of the road. For something to do, I windmill my arms, letting the muscles loosen. I walk in place, stretch my legs, prepare my body for what is to come. Soren and Iric stand by my sides, waiting with me.
The sun inches higher in the sky, and still Peruxolo doesn’t show.
I send a prayer to the goddess, begging her for guidance and strength. What will I do if the low god doesn’t show? How am I to return home and make things right if I can’t do the task that was set for me? If he comes for me and my family in the night?
After another ten minutes go by, I realize I needn’t have worried.
He appears in the trees, just as he did over three months ago. He steps off a branch and hovers in the air, cape swaying behind him, hood raised.
Terrifying, as always.
But as I watch him, watch how he appears to stand in the air, as though an invisible wall holds him up—I remember the piece of metal I saw in his forge. The one I thought appeared to be the length of a man’s foot.
It was.
Exactly the length of this god’s foot, in fact.
Peruxolo has lodestones in the base of each boot. He must have iron buried in the ground right there. He climbs the tree and appears to float because of the negative reaction between the metals. Oh, so clever.
Soren gives my shoulder a squeeze, and then I hear him and Iric retreat, leaving me to my task.
“I’ve been challenged,” Peruxolo says in that cutting, dangerous tone he uses. The voice that makes us tremble; the voice we feel in our bones.
Except, now that I don’t fear him as I once did, I don’t really feel his voice in my bones. That was just my imagination, something born of raw fear.
“You have,” I snap. “And you’re late.”
Gasps sound all around me. No one is short with the god. No one dares ever speak to him in such a way.
I dare.
Because if I already made my intent to kill him clear, he can hardly be offended by my tone.
“A god’s time is not dictated by mortals,” he says. “I was foolish not to watch you die the last time we met. I will not make that mistake today. I will break your body in every way possible before I end you.”
He leaps down from his “floating” position and rises to his full height, well over six feet, but he does not pull his ax from off his back.
Instead he flicks his wrist.
I dodge the move and hear a chink as his power hits the rocks where I once stood, but as I look at the space, I see something familiar sticking up out of the ground.
It’s small, easily missed if I hadn’t already seen one before. I reach for it, and pull the metal triangle from the ground carefully, so as not to cut myself against the edges.
And then I remember the night I saw the previous village leader of Restin fall. Peruxolo flicked his wrist, and he fell over dead with blood pooling around him.
And a thought strikes me.
Iric had to build us spears in order for us to kill the hyggja. My village and all the other villages—we have built our weapons to survive in the wild, to kill our most common enemy, the ziken. That is why we use battle-axes, because they are the only things strong enough to pierce their hides.
The villages all keep to themselves—we’ve not had battles against one another. Our enemies have never been human. But if one’s enemy were human? Well, he would need a weapon that cut through human skin. No need for a battle-ax. Anything sharp and projected quickly enough would draw blood. All someone would have to do is aim for the large vein in the neck and tear right through it.
A sharp pain slices into the side of my leg, right in the small gap where my greaves break to meet the armor on my thighs. I let my new realization distract me, and Peruxolo took the opening I gave him.
I reach down for the triangle and pull it from my skin, wincing at the wave of pain it brings.
I will not let him cut away at me piece by piece like this. He knows where the gaps in my armor are, and he’s aiming right for them.
A cruel smile waves across the god’s face. He’s enjoying this, enjoying the crowd poised to watch, enjoying watching me suffer.
No more.
I advance three steps before Peruxolo lashes out with his wrist again, this time aiming for my collarbone, right where my breastplate doesn’t quite reach.
Instead of trying to dodge it, I raise my battle-ax, placing it between the god’s weapon and my vulnerable skin.
Tink.
Light gasps sound around us, and Peruxolo and I stare at the spot where the triangle struck. The tip is wedged i
nto one of the blades. With the hand not holding my ax, I grab the triangle—carefully and without cutting myself—and flick it toward the rocks at my feet. Whatever metal this new weapon is made of, it doesn’t appear to react with anything, so it must be neutral—made with the intent to pierce skin and nothing more.
And I keep walking toward my village’s oppressive deity.
Peruxolo’s eyes grow wide for a moment, but he quickly recovers himself and thrusts his whole arm toward me, putting more dramatics into the motion that will release the metal in my direction. I wonder what sort of contraption he has hidden up his sleeves.
I have only a split second to see the metal dive toward my hips, at the gap in my armor that allows me to bend in half there.
I thrust out my arm, catch the triangle on my ax blade once more, and keep going, this time at a jog.
For a moment, I think I might be irritating him, but I realize—
I’ve bored him.
I can see it under his hood, the way his eyes look down, as though it’s sad, really, that I’m trying so hard.
His right leg slides back on the ground, finding a better position to brace himself, preparing for the moment when my armor will react against his and I’ll be thrown backward.
Not this time.
I can’t help it, I grin at him as I advance, running now, my ax raised.
Bored. He’s so bored. So ready to be done with me and done with all these people. Ready to go home and continue to live on as our greatest fear.
I know exactly when I’ve come too close.
There’s a moment when I cross an invisible line, and those thick blond brows shoot up in astonishment. He knew exactly how far out I should be before I was thrown back. His body jolted slightly, as though he would put some of his own force into the impact.
But no.
He’s so close now, closer than he’s ever been before. My heart hammers from the proximity, my breath rushes out for the excitement of it. Every muscle I possess flexes, ready to fight, ready to win, ready to go home.
And I take a swing with my new ax made of lodestone.
Peruxolo barely gets his own ax up in time, and despite not making contact with skin, that resistance, the force of metal on metal is glorious.
Because it means I can hurt him. I made him bleed once, and it will happen again today.
I don’t know how many years of training Peruxolo has on me exactly, but I intend to use every piece of training I know against him. Besides, he’s been alone in the wild with no one to fight.
I just completed my training three months ago.
I have never been more ready for this fight.
The shafts of our axes are wedged together, each of us trying to force the other back. I use our closeness to hook my foot behind one of his ankles and tug at the same time my arms heave forward with all my weight.
And Peruxolo, the most feared being in all the world, falls to the ground, flat on his back.
He stares up at me, disbelief and incredulity pouring off him, but before I can get my ax head any closer, he somersaults backward and flicks his cape over his head, coming up first on his knees and then his feet.
“You’re not the only one who’s learned the wild’s secrets,” I say, and I bring my ax down on his right arm.
He folds the limb into his body, but I still connect. My ax swipes down the front of his arm, one of the blades pointed toward the ground. It rips into his leather shirt, slices through—wood?—and embeds into the soil.
Shards rain down onto the rocks.
Whatever the contraption was that Peruxolo had strapped under his cloak, I’ve broken it. No more metal triangles being flung toward me now.
But my ax has caught between two rocks on the ground, and before I can right it, Peruxolo clips me in the chin with the pommel of his weapon.
I go crashing onto rocks and sharp twigs, and one of the muscles in my arm pulls as I land on it awkwardly.
“Recover!” A shout goes up from the sidelines, and I roll, roll, roll, as Peruxolo swings his ax down at me with two hands again and again and again.
When I finally get a chance to come up on my feet, Peruxolo is looking at the crowd.
At Master Burkin.
“I’ll deal with you after I finish with her.”
My weapon is still in the ground several feet away. All I have are my limbs as weapons.
I fly at Peruxolo while he’s distracted with Burkin and knee him in the groin. The god uses a latrine, so I’m fairly certain he has that part.
He goes down like a bag of rocks, just like any human man would, and I race over to my ax.
Murmurs rise from the crowd.
“She’s struck him twice now—the god!”
“He feels pain.”
“He’s not invincible.”
Peruxolo forces himself to his feet as I turn around with my weapon in hand, and as he does so, his hood falls from his face.
More chittering as the crowd goes on about his human face.
Peruxolo quickly rights it, grimacing as he does so. He’s still in pain.
I adjust my position slightly, putting Aros’s rope trap between me and Peruxolo.
The god advances, and I duck just a couple of feet into the tree line, keeping my eyes on the god instead of the loop of rope hidden on the ground beneath leaves and twigs.
Peruxolo steps right through it, cracking the stick holding the trap in place. The bent tree beside me swings upward, hoisting Peruxolo up with it by a single foot.
Now the crowd dares to laugh as Peruxolo’s cape dangles to the ground, and his whole body swings about madly.
I grin and take a moment to look toward Aros. Iric is elbowing him and likely singing his praises for me.
I put my hand against the god’s waist and give him a spin. More laughter. It’s contagious. I’ve never been comfortable being the center of attention. But right here, exposing the god, hearing everyone’s reactions—it’s easy to get lost in the moment.
“Rasmira!” Soren shouts from the sidelines. “Hurry and end it!”
By the time I look back at Peruxolo, he’s already finished sawing at the rope with his ax. He falls in a heap on the ground when the rope snaps, and he finds his feet and blade once more.
Cursing my foolishness, I take up position at the road once more, never giving my back to Peruxolo.
“I’ve had it with you!” He charges, ax held in front, ready to skewer me. I block it, and in the same motion, I curve my ax back around toward his body.
The blade cuts through armor, skin, and bone. Peruxolo cries out and grips his side.
There it is again.
Blood.
He tries to cover it with his fingers, but red seeps through.
The crowd is practically shouting now. They’re growing closer, giving Peruxolo and me less room to move.
“My name is Rasmira Bendrauggo,” I say. “I want you to know that before I end you.”
“This will not be my end!” He flies at me, more calculated and careful this time.
Our axes connect, and Peruxolo sends a fist sailing at me.
I hear Burkin’s cry of outrage as my neck cranes to the right, cracking from the force of it.
“There are no rules out here,” Peruxolo seethes.
“I shouldn’t have expected you to fight fair.”
“I’m a god. This was never a fair fight.”
He detangles himself from me. He’s no longer running at me, but away from me. In great leaps, he starts scaling the air, as though climbing an invisible staircase. Higher and higher.
There must be more iron plates in the ground, growing in purity, letting the metal soles in his shoes carry him higher and higher. It’s an act for the crowd. He’s trying to redeem his reputation, make them see him as their powerful god.
It’s both fascinating and terrifying to watch, even though this trick is no mystery to me. If only I, too, had lodestone soles in my boots, I could climb just as he does. What woul
d the spectators think then? That I’d suddenly gained godly abilities from being out in the wild? Or would they put it together as I have?
Peruxolo switches his ax to his left hand and reaches behind his back with his right. A gleaming silver dagger, like the one he used to pierce me before, appears in his hand, and he flings it.
I’m ready this time, prepared to flick the weapon away with my ax, but it’s not turning end over end in my direction.
Did the wound I dealt to his side throw off his aim?
The dagger sails over my head and lands in the branches of a tree only a few feet away. A cracking noise emits above my head, and I look up in time to see something spinning for me.
It connects with my ax faster than I can even follow. No, it sticks to it. More lodestones at work. It’s similar in size to the metal triangles Peruxolo projected from his arms, but this one is circular, with little metal teeth. Only this is another new metal. Something that is drawn to the lodestone just as powerfully as iron repels it.
My stomach sinks as I realize—if I’d been wearing armor made out of the lodestone, this sharp little disc would have punctured straight through and wounded me. A small loop of rope hangs off the disc. When Peruxolo threw his dagger, he must have severed the only thing holding the metal back from connecting with the nearest lodestone.
Despite Peruxolo floating in the air, despite most of the crowd waiting to watch me fail, I laugh.
“You prepared for someone figuring out your secret!” I shout up to him. “If anyone else made an ax out of lodestones, you needed to be ready. You positioned me here, closest to the tree, so this”—I point to the metal disc—“would stick to me.”
Peruxolo leaps from his height advantage. I flip the switch on my ax to unleash the spike, readying for him.
Our blades tangle at the tips as he hits the ground, rocks rolling away from his landing. He tips his chin to the side so he can better see me from under his hood. His knuckles whiten on his ax as he pushes toward me, forcing me back a step. Then another, and another.
I try to pull away to the side, but he twists our axes, tangling them together further, herding me toward the crowd. He’s going to back me up right into them.
Warrior of the Wild Page 24
