by Marin Landis
Egalfas shrugged and stepped forward to shove her. It was a half-hearted attempt and Ottkatla swayed back, ensuring his push was only the slightest touch. She bent her legs slightly and inclined her head toward him.
“Right then, let’s have at it.” He fell into a crouch, the traditional position for hand to hand combat and inched in her direction. Suddenly, rapidly, he grabbed at her with both hands, looking to capture her in a bear hug or to throw her to the ground. Instead, she stepped forward, twisted to the side and swung her arm under and around his arm. Before he could react to prevent it, she’d kicked his foot away as he was about to place his weight on it and he fell to the ground, hard, propelled by her in some way Melvekior couldn’t fathom.
She raised her arms and stepped back away from him as he got to his feet, his jaw now set. Niceties aside, he rushed her, head slightly bowed and arms drawn back to strike at her if she moved out of his way. She did not. Somehow, and none of them could quite see exactly how, she bent backwards, slotted her arms through his and pushed with her legs. His momentum carried them both forward and impossibly Ottkatla twisted herself around the soldier’s body, pivoting with her right leg, so that she again was left standing while Egalfas spat out dirt as he rose.
It seemed plain at that juncture that she’d had enough. As he pushed himself to his feet, she struck. As fast as Melvekior had seen anything move, she lunged and struck his back, near the shoulder blade, with her elbow, dropping to one knee. The breath whooshed out of the poor young guard and he fell flat to the floor, his face striking the dirt for the third time. Her hand reared up, and from somewhere she’d produced a long knife which she brought down with fearsome force and a thud into the grass perilously close to her opponent’s head, a squeal and a curse erupting from him.
“He is bloodied,” she said, not the slightest bit out of breath. And it was true. She’d nicked Egalfas’s ear with his own dagger; a red spot of gore visible on the lobe.
There was silence for a moment and then Mikael let out a whistle of appreciation. Aeldryn shook his head and looked at Melvekior with interest. The young Count was thunderstruck. Not that taken with her fighting abilities, but the way she moved was fascinating. The way she pushed herself up with both hands and dusted herself down. The way she pulled Egalfas up and handed him back his dagger, a grim look on her face as though she hadn’t enjoyed defeating him. Not only was she an incredibly attractive young woman but something within her drew his attention and held it.
“I think we have it. Ottkatla, on behalf of the Three Kingdoms, I welcome you to our employ and charge you with the education of our son,” Mikael spoke like his son hadn’t often heard him. Almost courtly, indeed formally. The distinction was of only minor distraction. She was to teach him? Teach him what? To fight like that. He had supposed weapons training was inevitable and Aeldryn had warned him. The life of a noble was not one of indolence and idleness, but of struggle and challenge. On this both his father and tutor agreed. He didn’t think it fair but knew he had no choice. Even this exciting news was tinged with sadness for Melvekior, for he knew what it meant. Mikael had many times promised to teach him all that he knew and he was trying to pass this along to someone else. The twelve year old, though advanced for his years and mature in many ways was still a child. A child with only one parent and he craved that parent’s attention so.
“Father, you were to teach me the arts of the soldier,” he cringed at his voice. Not impressive and he held no authority, but reedy and high pitched. Did he sound whiny? Ottkatla would not be impressed by that. He cleared his throat, though the lump therein threatened to push him all the way to sobs. “I believe I could learn the most from you, if not all of your battle stratagems. Aeldryn has not the stomach for such instruction.”
For once Mikael seemed lost for words. “Yer right, son. Such an opportunity this was. The Herjen is a once in a lifetime happenstance, once in ten lifetimes, I could not let it pass. My mind was almost deranged with excitement, so much did I forget for a short time. Forgive me.” He stood and Melvekior ran to his arms. “I will not forsake my oath to you, son.” His eyes glistened and Melvekior wept openly, with love and relief and an overflowing of emotion not entirely sad.
It was an uncomfortable scene for the three left outside of the father-son moment. Aeldryn, the only one to know the background, happy to witness such a spectacle, Egalfas eager to be on his way and Ottkatla, intrigued and regretting her initial harsh judgments of these people.
CHAPTER FIVE
Instruction
“I never felt inferior to her, though I knew she could kill me at her leisure.” - Melvekior
With a firm promise from his father to teach him everything he knew of military history and strategy, Melvekior trudged to his bedroom to dress in his work clothes. He didn’t know what to expect but was excited at the prospect of spending time with this strange guest of theirs. That she was beautiful and fascinating to him was beyond doubt, but she also struck a chord within him. Sympathy. For someone other than him who felt out of place and lost. The way she grabbed on to Magret was extraordinary and although he didn’t quite have the maturity or self awareness to understand why that attracted him, he certainly sensed a kindred spirit.
He changed quickly, his mind consumed with the red-headed girl below. More than once he found himself motionless, thinking about how she moved and how she managed to best Egalfas, an incredibly gifted fighter.
He wore a pair of soft leather boots turned down at the top but covering his ankles entirely, a pair of loose leggings with holes in both knees from climbing his father’s favorite tree and a plain white tunic. The tunic was thick and well made and it felt nice against his skin. He experienced a shiver of excitement. Finally, he would learn to be a warrior, like his father, like Egalfas and Petomu the guards and like the Kings and Princes of Aeldryn’s stories. He knew he had it in him to be a grand hero.
Melvekior skipped down the stairs, having to dodge Mikael coming up. “Careful son, don’t break your own neck before that lassie outside gets the chance,” he shouted, laughing.
Ottkatla was sitting cross-legged in the grass when he arrived back at the spot where she had defeated Egalfas so handily. Aeldryn could be seen in the distance at the tree line, fussing with something. Her red hair hanging down she was looking at something in her hand and as he got closer he noticed it was a simple aster. He would often lay in this spot, the ground being even and the morning sun catching the area nicely to warm the soft grass, and just watch the sky, lost in his own thoughts and memories. She looked as though she were doing the exact same thing.
“They grow all over the grass, the asters. Do you not have them in the mountains?” He was always eager to show off his knowledge.
Ottkatla looked up and smiled briefly. “We do, of course, rock daisies we call them, but bigger than this.” Her accent was exotic and he knew he could listen to it all day.
She stood. Nearly a foot taller than him and so close he needed to bend his neck to see her face. She didn’t look capable of beating him, let alone a grown man hardened by battle, but he’d seen it with his eyes. And now he could feel it with his self. A power radiated from her, the sort of energy he would get when he stood on the roof of the keep and looked down. For an unknown reason it scared him, as though he were nervous that she would do something destructively unexpected, but precisely like the compulsion to jump he experienced while on the highest point of his family home, it was almost irresistible.
“Melvekior, listen to me.” She stared him straight in the face and he was unable to look away. “I have no idea how to teach you to fight, so don’t expect miracles, but I am in your father’s debt and I will do what is necessary for my folk.” She stressed the word “folk” as though unsure of the correct word to use.
“Surely with such skill you will be a fine instructor, lady…” that wasn’t his only question but he’d been told enough to keep to a single one and he certainly meant his words as a question.
Ottkat
la did not see them as such, her grasp of his language tenuous. “We will see.” She motioned to the grass and sat down again. He did, cross-legged to emulate her and waited. “I suppose the best place to begin is to ask you what experience you have had.”
He thought for a moment, “None.”
“None? Surely that’s not right.” She turned her body so that she was facing him now. He noticed the muscles on her arms ripple as she twisted her body around.
He shrugged.
“Have you ever had a fight with your brother or sister? Or with a friend? Even if it wasn’t serious?”
He had no siblings and he told her so. “Nor do I know anyone I would like to fight with, Aeldryn is my friend I suppose and Magret from the kitchen, but I’d never strike them.”
Her reaction was puzzling to him, she started to look unhappy. Maybe he wasn’t answering how she wanted.
“Don’t you worry, I’ll pay close attention to your tutelage. Ask Aeldryn, I’m an excellent student,” he stated earnestly.
“Melvekior, where is your mother?” Her eyes on him, she held his wrist with her right hand, the intensity of her gaze startling him. He hadn’t expected that question and instinctively shied away, pulling his arm free and turning his head so that she couldn’t see the tears that came, instant and unbidden. Before he could react further she’d grabbed both of his shoulders and pulled him tightly into her chest. He resisted for a brief moment and then put his arms around her, feeling the soft fur of whatever animal had given its hide for her jerkin, the texture being oddly comforting. The smell that he found objectionable just this morning, now made him feel safe and wanted.
A dam broke within Melvekior. The twelve year old boy without a mother and whose father could conquer entire countries but found it impossible to heal his son’s broken heart. Mikael was full of back slaps and ruffled heads but had never sat his son down and talked to him. Aeldryn and sometimes Magret filled those needs but neither had the intensity of feeling that Ottkatla radiated. Her calmness and willingness to listen and hold him filled the need in the young man’s heart. The need for a mother. He’d buried deeply how much he missed her and now he was vulnerable enough to let it out.
His unsuccessfully hidden tears soon turned to wracking sobs and then to wailing as he called out to his mother, his feeble, hoarse voice, weaker and weaker until he simply lay, sniffling and half-delirious in Ottkatla’s embrace like a sleeping puppy. She shared tears with the boy, and although her mother was alive and well she keenly felt the distance from her and in some way this helped her to empathize with Melvekior.
What she didn’t truly understand on more than a primal level was that which lived inside her. Her fighting ability was decidedly average, but the presence in her mind that directed her actions was able to control her incredibly effectively. “Control” wasn’t quite the right word though. “Guided” was more accurate and she found herself amazed that the goals of Herjen were so closely aligned with hers. Almost completely aligned. She couldn’t remember the last time they had differed or if even they were separate entities. It had felt so at first, but now it was merely a small voice in her mind. Fate was how Foerlund described it. She was destined to “become” the Herjen, not house a magical non-corporeal being which what she originally thought. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
At the moment that she had awoken to the knowledge that something had changed a vast world had opened up before her. Things were not as they previously seemed. People were more transparent, events had more meaning. It was subtle and at the same time, totally life-changing. Her transition into womanhood took on a deeper meaning. Far from mere physical changes, it came with a profound understanding of her part in the complex network of life. She knew, absolutely instinctively, that she was a vital part of some grand plan. One that would have far-reaching implications for her people.
Exactly what this all meant, she still didn’t know.
The change was four winters past and she had grown into herself commendably, or so said Foerlund, their spirit-man. A foreigner, he had come to live with the Tarkan decades ago and he looked his age. Withered and feeble, it was all he could do to walk from his roundhouse to the woods. He had to be watched carefully in case he fell over and couldn’t get up. More than once he’d been found, half-frozen, limbs askew, over a fallen tree, or rock, having lain there the night. “There is no need to fear the Herjen, Katl, it is not a contagion or an infestation. It is the warmth of a cozy fire on a cold day, the arms of your mother when you fear the dark and the hope of Er-Heimstod.”
“How do you know so much about it, Foerlund?” she had asked one day, not long after it was confirmed that indeed she was the Herjen.
He looked at her oddly, like she was someone else for a moment. “I once loved a woman who was touched by it,” he said after a while. “It destroyed her, and I couldn’t bear it. I went away and for many years walked the lands between my home and here.” He rose from his spot before the fire in the roundhouse he now called home and lay on his sleeping area. “This is now my home,” he closed his eyes. “Imagine my surprise,” he started and didn’t finish.
She’d asked him twice more over the years and both times he had become so tired that he immediately sought sleep.
Now she had a young boy sleeping in her lap. Was she now the spirit-woman of this tiny tribe? She had been charged to follow her fate here and see that Mikael’s will was done. Within reason. His will would still have to be in accord with that of hers. She had slowly become relieved as it became plain he wasn’t going to try to marry her off to anyone or try to take her for himself. She was here, as was at least one other, to instruct his child.
If that was the worst her fate would make her do, it was a happy burden, but she couldn’t see how this would contribute to the success of her tribe in a time of overwhelming trouble, which was supposed to be the very point of the Herjen.
She made the attempt to stand slowly enough that Melvekior would not awake but he did. He stirred and looked up at her and quickly got to his feet. “Will we start our lessons now?” he asked, red faced and drowsy, yet still conscious enough to want to change the subject.
“Yes,” she said tenderly, “let’s do that.” She knew that there’d never be a repeat of that, that he was too aware now but she’d be there for him if he wanted to. She felt satisfied that an unspoken agreement had been made between them that day.
Mikael kept to his deal. He was superstitious enough, though dismissive on the outside, to take seriously any oath made in the presence of the Herjen. While the belief in such a being wasn’t within the canon of the worship of Mithras, the chief Uthite God, he’d seen too much to take any chances.
His understanding of military tactics was a combination of trial and error on the battlefield, learned hard with the lives of men he respected. Such lessons came fast and stuck well; no amount of bookish study could teach such things. It took blood and desperation and fear. When your friends and their families rely on you to keep the wolves from their door, you make the right decisions or you go insane with grief and regret. Mikael had no time for stress so he made the right decisions. Mostly.
He taught his son everything he knew about war, but nothing about life. He was reluctant to broach the subject of women; the death of Melvekior’s mother was utterly unapproachable. He didn’t love her and the boy wouldn’t have wanted to know that and of course, there was the matter of her passing from their lives. The boy wasn’t ready for that sort of thing, so least said, soonest mended.
Every battle he had fought in the subjugation of the barbarian tribes, he remembered vividly and told in detail. Then there was the matter of the Mareshian uprising, where Mikael had first made his name. Fighting his own people. It was disgusting and unhappy, but there he had learned how to be ruthless and this message he made very clear to his son.
“Show no mercy, boy, ever. This I cannot stress enough,” he walked back and forth before a large map of Maresh-Kar. “Vinius, th
e poor bastard, would have prevailed had I shown clemency to him and his generals. Their plan was to throw themselves upon my mercy, knowin’ I was green and they had guards in their deep pockets.”
Mikael started all of his lessons with moral guidance he felt useful. Normally it was a rant about how wrong everyone else was. Melvekior had his points of view tempered by the moderate slant of Aeldryn’s leadership so while he respected his father more than any person, he was able to view his opinions through a veil of reason.
“So, ye know what I did?” he demanded. Mikael became more passionate and more angry and more common when he spoke about something he felt strongly. Melvekior did know, but he deigned not to answer, for his response would make no difference. “I killed ‘em. I gave ‘em a chance to show their true colors and they did and I killed ‘em.” He was almost ranting now, his face was flushed and Melvekior was getting bored. He’d heard it all before. “And if’n I hadn’t, you,” he pointed to his son, “and you,” then at Ottkatla who was sitting politely by, “would neither of you, be here.”
He knew the history of the tribes’ subjugation under Uth and Mikael was instrumental in that. What the official records didn’t tell was Mikael’s dealings with the tribes, before and after the conquest. Going by his rules, it would have been prudent to destroy the entire civilization, but he did not. And whatever drove him to spare them that genocide, was the same thing that ensured Ottkatla’s presence here. He’d asked once, directly, and was told equally directly that it had nothing to do with him. His weapons master didn’t know either. In her way, she was equally a victim of her father’s follies as he was.
For the next five years, he spent his days studying, fighting and eating. Everyone but he had an outside life, a family life. Aeldryn visited his home annually for their re-awakening rites, Ottkatla every season for feasting and to assure her people that she was well and good and that the Herjen had not deserted them, although much of its influence seemed dormant. Even cook had her dalliances with soldiers and a blacksmith; everyone loves a good cook.
