Some shouted at him, and one ripped the stolen ring from Dval’s finger while another man, with tears in his eyes, salvaged the damaged sword, taking the relic in both hands.
Dval did not understand all of the accusations leveled against him, but one man drew his sword and strode forward, intent on taking Dval’s head.
Dval gritted his teeth and bared his neck. He stared into his executioner’s eyes as befitted a man who was no coward. The soldier raised his tall sword high, brought the blade down.
“Stobben!” the girl shouted.
The sword veered and bit into the ground near Dval’s head.
Dval looked up in time to see a knight in fishmail help the girl come limping from the carriage, while six others circled him, eager for the kill. They forced Dval to sit on the ground in the sunlight, where his skin would burn and his eyes could not see.
They pulled the bodies of the wolves that he’d slain together, and laid them side-by-side. The pelt of a dire wolf was valuable. Few men had ever killed five at a time.
***
Avahn found her mother’s body downhill. Wolves had mauled it and pulled it into the shadows under the oaks. Only a bit of blue dress identified the corpse.
One of her father’s soldiers covered it with a forest green cloak and tried to pull Avahn away, but she stayed rooted, let the tears flow long and hard while flies buzzed about.
The soldiers kept the Inkarran boy on his knees, in the sun. In the bright light, she could see his hair like braided silver, running down his neck. The wool earrings were as crimson as blood. Many bites and scratches marred his smooth skin.
She begged them to let him go, but Captain Adelheim said, “He’s more than Inkarran. He’s Woguld. They’re all under a death sentence. Only your father can stay the boy’s execution.”
“He saved my life,” she said.
“He was robbing corpses, and he would have killed you,” Captain Adelheim said.
“But he didn’t,” she said vehemently.
Just then, one of Adelheim’s men kicked the boy, knocking him over, and others jeered.
Avahn stared hard at Captain Adelheim. He was a fair man, with a red beard and piercing blue eyes. His frame and features were flawless. Silently she begged for compassion, but he just shrugged. Avahn whirled and slugged Dval’s attacker in the gut.
The soldiers all roared in laughter. “Careful there, Pwyrthen, or the princess might drop her aim a bit.”
The soldiers backed away then, leaving the boy to gasp on the ground, like a landed trout.
Avahn got one of her mother’s riding cloaks and put it over him, then settled next to him, prepared to beg her father for the boy’s life. She feared that it was in vain. For two hundred years they’d fought the Woguld.
She asked Captain Adelheim, “Did you see the men from the gray ships?”
“It wasn’t men on those ships,” Captain Adelheim said. “They were creatures with black exoskeletons, like reavers, and philia hanging like worms off of their head plates. Where they came from, we are not sure. But we think we know. Your father went searching for new territories. Now, we’ve been discovered. . . .”
Legend had said that there was a land far across the Carrol Sea, a vast continent where no man had set foot and returned. Three years back, her father had sent an expedition to that land, hoping to learn if men lived there. The expedition had never returned.
“So they landed? They set the fires?”
“Their ships never beached,” Captain Adelheim said. “The creatures just stepped off them, into the water, and walked on the bottom of the sea until they reached the shore. Yes, they set fires. But none of them will ever return home.” He paused. “We call them toths.”
“Toths,” Avahn repeated. Fangs.
Avahn had never seen a reaver, only their skulls. She could not imagine what a toth might look like.
There is a moment in every person’s life where they recognize that they are going to have to survive through hard times. The night fighting wolves had seemed terrible, but Avahn knew in some deep part of her, that it was only the beginning.
***
At midday, the King of Mystarrians came—a plump man with sandy brown hair and a dark crown carved from oak, and robes of royal blue. He rode in with thirty men, circled Dval, studied him.
In the hills above them, Dval heard a woodpecker tapping. Peck peck. Peck, peck, peck, peck.
It was Woguld warrior speak, made by tapping sandstone against a tree. “We are here.”
The king and his men did not seem to notice.
Instead, the Mystarrians argued.
***
King Harrill was filled with grief at the death of his wife, and he strode over the field of wreckage like an angry badger, like a storm in the brewing. His eyes were bloodshot and glazed from lack of sleep. He’d been fighting all night, and now he paced restlessly, moving one direction first, changing in an instant. Until that day, he had been called Harrill the Cunning, but many argue that on that day he became Harrill the Mad.
For a long time, he knelt above the body of his dead wife, silently grieving. Everyone fell silent, showing quiet respect.
Suddenly a growl sounded. Avahn whirled. The huge leader of the pack stood at the edge of the forest, beneath an oak, drenched in blood, crimson flowing over black fur. It lowered its head, peered at the king from yellow eyes, and snarled. It was making its last stand. By instinct, every man froze in fear.
It gathered its strength and lunged across the clearing, leapt, its fangs seeking her father’s throat.
A lesser man would have cried out or fled in terror, but her father was a runelord, with runes of brawn and grace branded upon his neck. He merely leaned away from the attack, and brought up a mailed fist.
His blow sounded like a crack of lighting. It split hide and shattered bones, sent wolf teeth and blood flying in the air. The blow sounded like finality.
He stood, glaring down at the body of the wolf for a long minute, gasping, as the wolf’s legs shivered and spasmed.
Finally he growled and whirled on Dval. “Why is that . . . creature still alive?” he shouted to his men.
“He saved my life,” Avahn answered softly.
“More than likely,” her father argued, “he’s the one who caused the wreck. They do it all the time, spook our horses at sunset, steal our crops in the night, murder travelers in their sleep. They’re barbarians, not even human.”
He went to Dval, pulled his own battle axe, and raised it high.
The boy, dazed and forlorn, did not cry out in fear. Instead, he spit at the king’s feet.
“No,” Avahn called out to Dval, for she knew better than to test her father’s wrath. The boy raised his chin and offered his neck, glaring.
“Oh, this one has spirit,” the king mocked. “I like him, but I’m still going to kill him.”
Avahn shouted at her father, “Da, I trust him. We can trust him.”
“He’s a barbarian,” her father argued. He prepared to take the killing blow.
She stepped in front of the boy. “You train your knights for years, never knowing if their hearts will remain true in the depths of battle. This boy’s heart is true.”
The king jutted his chin toward her, and the giant Sir Bandolan grabbed Avahn’s shoulder, pulled her out of the way.
In the moment, the world went quiet. King Harrill strained. Up in the forest above, a woodpecker pecked, and in the distance a squirrel called from an oak tree.
“Hear that?” the king asked his men. His eyes danced left and right, as if he were thinking faster than a water strider could dance above a pool. He whirled and looked uphill, to where green oaks spread over the dead grasses, casting deep shadows.
He shouted, “Come on, you bastards! I hear you up there. May you all taste my wrath this day!”
There was no answer from the silent woods for a long moment.
Suddenly a single archer stepped out from behind a tree. As a warlord of the
Woguld, he wore a crimson breechcloth. A white silk cape flowed over his shoulders like a waterfall. A sunmask adorned his face, a silver imale like an elk with broad antlers, with black-glass covered eyes to guard against bright light. The blue tattoos of his family tree wound around his calves, naming his ancestors and their deeds. He was glorious to look upon, regal and perfect.
He stood with his great bow, its wings flaring wide, and nocked an arrow.
The king laughed and rubbed forefinger against thumb, the sign for “trade.” He pointed to Dval.
Avahn did not know whether her father was offering to buy the boy, or to spare his life for a price.
***
To Dval, it was the worst of insults. The folk of the Woguld did not trade in slaves. Every man served his clan. The warlord up above them was his uncle, and Dval felt certain that his uncle would order his men to waylay these foreigners.
Instead, his uncle drew the bow and fired.
The arrow sped toward them, and Dval thought, “He plans to kill their king!”
Yet even as the thought came, he realized that the arrow was winging toward him.
A flash to his side, a heavy thud—and Dval went flying from harm’s way, his face skidding into the leaves. The girl Avahn had shoved him, thrown him to the ground as the arrow whistled past. Avahn lay beside him, groaning in pain. Dval saw red on her bicep, and realized that she hurt from more than bruises. The arrow had kissed her.
Dval’s uncle called out, “What kind of fool are you? Do we not have enough enemies? You must save one?” Always that tone. “The friend of my enemy,” the uncle said, “is my enemy!”
His uncle spat, turned, and strode into the shadows under the trees.
For a second, Dval knew the sorrow of one who has been dispossessed.
Dval watched his uncle, and did not know who was more a barbarian—his uncle, the northerners around him, or Dval himself.
Perhaps we are all barbarians, Dval thought, struggling to be human.
Only one person here seemed truly human—the child Avahn.
After that, no one threatened to kill Dval. Apparently now that he was cast out from the Woguld, his death sentence was rescinded. By trying to kill him, his uncle had saved his life.
Avahn took Dval’s hand. Together they rode down to the sprawling cities of Mystarria, to her home at the Courts of Tide, where the war fires of the Toth still burned.
Acknowledgements
This project wouldn’t have gotten off the ground without the Kickstarter support from these wonderful people:
Karen Abrahamson
Gerard M. Ackerman
Claire Alcock
Susan Allen
JC Andrijeski
Michael Bellomo
Donald J. Bingle
Robin Brande
Kirsten Brodbeck-Kenney
AnneMarie Buhl
Tom Carpenter
Brenda Cooper
T. Thorn Coyle
Leah Cutter
Ron Dionne
Louis Doggett
Marcelle Dubé
Eric Edstrom
Lynda Foley
Karen Fonville
Robbyn Foster
Annaliese Furnas
John Haines
Mark-Wayne Harris
Joel Horton
Julie Hyzy
Jim Johnson
Jane Kennedy
Malachi Kenney
Pierre L’Allier
Rich Laux
Stephen Lebans
Christel Adina Loar
John Lorentz
Michael Lucas
Big Ed Magusson
Lisa M. May
Robert J. McCarter
Sean Monaghan
Patricia Nagle
Carole Nelson Douglas
Shyam Nunley
Alexei Pawlowski
Steve Perry
Jeff Rutherford
Jeanette Sanders
David Schibi
Ken Schneyer
Risa Scranton
Janna Silverstein
Kristine Smith
Bob Sojka
Margaret St. John
Christopher Stout
Robert E. Stutts
Lisa Sullivan
Raphael Sutton
Randy Tatano
Melissa Taylor
Scott Tefoe
Edd Vick
Ray Vukcevich
Leslie Walker
Terry Weyna
Sarah Woodbury
Stephanie Writt
Thank you!
FICTION RIVER
Year One
Unnatural Worlds
Edited by Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch
How to Save the World
Edited by John Helfers
Time Streams
Edited by Dean Wesley Smith
Christmas Ghosts
Edited by Kristine Grayson
Hex in the City
Edited by Kerrie L. Hughes
Moonscapes
Edited by Dean Wesley Smith
Crime (Special Edition)
Edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
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