by Travis Bughi
So Nicholas had gone to the docks.
There, he’d found a viking ship that was just about to leave. He mustered everything he had and approached the solid group of battle-hardened veterans, and they’d nearly laughed themselves to death. Nicholas didn’t shy away, though, and waited patiently for an answer. Perhaps that defiance was what had caught the jarl’s eye, for when the vikings finally got their breath back, they took him along. He never looked back.
“When the jarl took me in,” Nicholas explained, “he told me I likely wouldn’t survive. He said that when I died, they’d probably just eat me! Ha! He was just joking, though. I think.”
And thus began Nicholas’ journey. His diet consisted of meat, meat, and the occasional non-meat. His day consisted of doing one of three things: rowing one of several gigantic oars, carrying heavy weapons and gear, or doing everything in his power to survive.
“They gave me training,” Nicholas said. “They taught me how to fight. It was pretty brutal for the first few weeks, because I couldn’t take a hit. I also couldn’t block well, or dodge for that matter. I took a lot of hits to the face. My nose bled for probably three days straight, and my left eye was swelled shut for about the same time! Can you believe it? Haha!”
Emily didn’t laugh. Nicholas continued his story.
From Lucifan, he traveled to The North, climbed the Khaz Mal Mountains, and went pillaging and fighting with his new clan. The fights were brutal, the wars constant, but with every fight, he learned a bit more. It was enough to make Emily begin to cringe, but he insisted that the vikings had watched over him like a brother from the very beginning, and it was thanks to their guidance that he survived while others died. They thought him a full warrior now, and he felt so, too.
“I can’t begin to tell you about the battles I’ve been in!” Nicholas exclaimed. “The glory I’ve felt this past year, Emily, the thrill of combat! I’ve never felt so alive! It has been everything I dreamed of and more. And the things I’ve seen, you wouldn’t believe them if I told you. Have you heard of dragons, Emily? You have? Well, I’ve seen one. It flew right over our ship! We were lucky it didn’t come after us. I’ve even met dwarves and fought an orc! All by myself! Just me and him, we got singled out in a skirmish when his group tried to raid ours. We dueled to the death, and I defeated him!”
“That’s amazing, Nicholas,” Emily said, her lips parted.
She didn’t really understand everything he was telling her, particularly about those parts of the world she had yet to visit. She just nodded and took in her brother’s exuberance.
“Now,” Nicholas nodded, “your turn. Explain to me where my big sister has been.”
“I will, but first, explain to me why your, uh, clan is so upset about Stendar.”
“Ah, yes,” he grimaced. “That’s a tragedy, that is. You see, Emily, we vikings—”
“We vikings?”
“Yes, that’s what I said. We believe that if we die in combat, we’ll be revived in the afterlife to fight great battles for all eternity. To enter, you must die in a fight with your weapon in hand.”
“And if you don’t?”
“You are sent to a frigid hell, where you’ll suffer until the end of time in endless torment. The most terrible fate awaits a viking who dies in his bed, or, in this case, one who cannot grasp his weapon in his final moments.”
“Ah,” Emily swallowed, “your clan thinks I’m responsible for denying your friend the right to enter this . . . what do you call it?”
“Valhalla.”
Emily nodded.
“So, what happens now?” she asked.
“Not yet,” Nicholas held up a finger. “First, you tell me your story.”
Emily frowned and nodded. She couldn’t believe the way Nicholas spoke to her. He was so much more calm and mature than he had ever been before. Underneath it all, she could still sense his deeply engrained curiosity, but he was a different person now. No wonder she hadn’t recognized him until he took his helmet off.
Setting aside these thoughts, Emily told her story. There was a lot to tell, but thankfully Nicholas seemed eager to hear it all. He sat on the floor with her, staring wide-eyed with his mouth slightly ajar. In a momentary glimpse, Emily could see her younger brother’s former self, and she was encouraged to explain all she could. Nicholas never questioned or interrupted her, not even when she told him she’d been saved by an angel.
“So there,” Emily finished. “That’s everything. I’m on my way to Juatwa, and I had thought I was going to be dropped off in Savara before that pirate you beat up—thank you by the way—”
“Oh, trust me,” Nicholas smiled, “it was my pleasure.”
“—before that pirate staged a mutiny. He was going to force me to marry him, the disgusting creep. Your timing couldn’t have been better.”
Nicholas shrugged and frowned, saying, “Fate is inexorable.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a viking saying. It means some things are destined to happen. They seem like a coincidence to us, a simple stroke of luck, or even an extraordinary stroke of luck, but in truth, they were going to happen no matter what we did. You probably think meeting Chara was a chance thing, but truthfully, that was destiny. Even now, this fight, if I had not found you in this moment, we would have found you sooner or later, and I still would have beaten that pirate to a bloody pulp, and you still would have prevented the other pirate from killing me. My timing is irrelevant, because fate is inexorable.”
“Huh,” Emily said. “I see, I think. Are you sure you’re still younger than me?”
Nicholas laughed loudly and scratched the back of his head.
“So, what happens now?” she asked.
“Well, I’ve pleaded with the jarl about Stendar,” Nicholas said. “I asked him to take you with us, as a passenger, not a prisoner. I explained that you didn’t know about our customs, though that didn’t do much. But you’re my sister, and the jarl likes me. He even took me in as his son! My name is Nicholas Ragnarson, now!”
He thrust a triumphant fist into the air, but Emily did not smile.
“So his name is Ragnar?” she asked.
“You catch on quickly,” Nicholas nodded.
“Why aren’t you Nicholas Stout? What was wrong with your old name?”
Nicholas’ jolly mood dispersed in a flash. He looked away, in either embarrassment or nervousness, and Emily knew the answer. She felt a sharp pain in her heart, and her throat swelled.
“Nicholas?” she begged. “Aren’t you going home someday?”
Nicholas said nothing.
“You’re not coming home?” she asked, still unable to accept that which was obvious. “Nicholas, why aren’t you coming home? You need to go home, at least once. Don’t you know how worried Mother is about you?”
Still he said nothing. Still his head was turned.
“Look at me!” she screamed and grabbed his chin. “Why didn’t you send word to Mother that you’re alive and well? Do you know she cries herself to sleep at night worrying about you?”
Nicholas pushed her hand off but finally turned to face her.
“Did you ever consider that maybe I wanted them to think I was dead?”
Emily gaped and clutched a hand to her chest. Nicholas stared back at her, hard, in defiance. He barely even flinched when Emily reached back and slapped him across the face. Despite the stinging in her hand, it was her heart that hurt the most. Who was this man she’d once called her brother?
“That’s for Mother, our mother,” Emily said. “It’s what she would have done if she heard you say that. I can’t believe you, Nicholas. How could you do that to her? If I find a way to send word to Mother, I’ll do it.”
“Do what you have to do,” Nicholas’ voice was both calm and stern. “I won’t stop you. It doesn’t matter any how, because I’m never going back.”
“Why, Nicholas? Please, tell me why.”
He sighed, shook his head slowly and
scanned the ceiling with his eyes. It took Emily every bit she had not to slap him again.
“I don’t understand how this can be so difficult for you,” he replied, still looking away. “Doesn’t it anger you how Mother held us back? I mean, for all our lives we begged her for a chance to make something of ourselves, to have the chance that she had! She was an amazon who chose to be a farmer, and if she had been a fair woman, she would have let us make our own choices. But no, she decided to make them for us! She lied to us. Even worse, she lied to herself. She pretends to be a farmer when she’s really a warrior. She ran from her fate, rather than embracing it, all so she could hide the truth from us and stop us from becoming something great. It’s almost cowardly. No—it is cowardly.
“And out of all her children, I suffered the most. You and Abe, neither of you showed the curiosity that I did, so I took the brunt of her belittling, telling me not to try, not to ask, not to do, not, not, not! Every year—no! Every day was the same thing: waiting for crops to grow, trying not to starve to death, begging for scraps. I hated it! At first I thought it was just my fate to be so miserable, but then I saw Mother down that behemoth with a single arrow, and all of that changed. I knew then that if she could change who she was, then so could I. It didn’t help that you ran off to be an amazon and Abe got to be a gunslinger. That was the final straw, though, watching Father give both of those six-shooters to Abe. He had two sons, and two guns. What to do should have been simple, right? But what did he do? He gave both guns to his oldest, and I knew why. He did it because he knew Mother would never allow me to try. Abe she could handle, but me? I was young, always too young. Too innocent, too precious, too special, like a pathetic pet who needed watching. Under her, there on that farm, I was doomed to a life of servitude to her fears and insecurities.
“So I left, and in just one year’s time, I have proven her wrong and myself right! You, too, Emily. Look at you! Look at how wrong Mother was about us! You ask me how I can ignore her, but in truth, I cannot understand how you can forgive her. My home is here; I am a viking. I am no coward.”
Nicholas finished his speech by slamming a clenched fist into his chest, which made a solid sound of striking muscle. Emily was too stunned to notice, though.
It was like she had never known her brother until now. Sure, she knew of his curiosity, even shared in his desires to leave the Great Plains, but she’d never suspected the anger that dwelled within him. All three of the Stout children had been that way, carrying a burning desire for a life of their own. Emily had often thought that she had it worst as the only daughter, but Nicholas had just made a good argument against that. Emily wondered if perhaps her older brother also felt his situation to be the worst, having borne the unique problems of being first born.
However, neither Abe nor Emily blamed their mother for her decisions. Neither of them harbored the resentment that Nicholas did, and Emily paused to absorb this fact. It was something she had never considered before, this possibility that her mother wasn’t simply misguided but was instead outright wrong and culpable.
The moment it hit her mind, though, she dashed it away. If there was one real thing in this world, it was the concern her mother had for her children. The decisions their mother made were done out of the goodness in her heart, not from some selfish evil or ignorance as Nicholas thought. He was hurt, that much Emily could tell, but that did not excuse him from his negligence.
Mother did not deserve abandonment.
“Well?” Nicholas said. “Are you going to say something?”
“I don’t agree with you, Nicholas,” she replied, “and I’m going to send word to Mother that you’re alive and well. I won’t try to change your mind, though. I can see you’re set in your ways, and I imagine you see I’m set as well. I never realized how much I didn’t know about you until now, but I suppose that’s my fault for not looking harder. I’d rather you were still Nicholas Stout, but I promise to look past that. You’re still my brother, even if you don’t think we share the same parents anymore. I might even come visit you in The North when I get the chance. In fact, I think I’d like to.”
“I’m fine with that as well,” Nicholas gave a faint smile. “Thank you for understanding. You’re still my sister, too, okay? But I have to ask, why wait? If Ragnar forgives you, why don’t you just come home with me right now? I miss you.”
“I miss you, too,” Emily smiled back. “Thank you for the offer, but I need to get to Juatwa, remember? Fate is inexorable.”
Nicholas grinned.
“You always did catch on quick. A ride to the nearest Savara port then?”
“That would be great, little brother.”
Chapter 13
While Emily and Nicholas were talking, the vikings were busy. They were able to catch and restrain about a third of the pirate crew alive, which according to Nicholas, would fetch a decent price in the slave trade. Emily didn’t like the way her brother casually spoke about such things, but she was in no position to voice concerns. Although slavery was outlawed in Lucifan and nearly unheard of on the Great Plains, it was rather common in other parts of the world. After the rest of the ship had been thoroughly pillaged, Nicholas and Emily were brought out onto the main deck so the Captain’s room could be ransacked.
Outside, Emily saw the remnants of the battle.
The first body she recognized was Lonzo’s. It lay piled off to the side amongst others with a sword wound to the stomach. Emily had the feeling that the old pirate had not tried to dodge the attack that killed him, preferring death to the slow agony that would have awaited him as a slave. Damian was also dead, his chest cracked by a hammer, along with Urbano who had died with an axe blow to the head, just as Mosley had said. In fact, all of Priscila’s men were dead, likely giving everything they had to protect their love.
Priscila was tied up now, along with Mosley, Carlito, and four other pirates. Carlito had regained consciousness, and Emily tried not to make eye contact with him or any of the others. Fortunately, they remained quiet and reserved, except for Carlito who stared at her with a mixture of lust and hate. Emily felt her stomach churn. She felt no remorse for what awaited the First Mate.
The prisoners were arrayed on their knees in a line next to the other loot that had been taken from the ship. Vikings all around were piling bodies, handling weapons, loading crates of food, or honoring their fallen. Overseeing the activity was the jarl, Ragnar, and Emily needed no assistance identifying him.
He was in front of the prisoners, walking from one end of the line to the next, inspecting them. He was tall, even for a viking, had a chest like a keg, and arms like a minotaur. He had several scars on his body, mostly jagged cuts that had turned white with time. His hair was bright blonde, his eyes were a deep blue, and his left cheek looked like it had been horribly mauled early in his life. He wore heavy armor, more than anyone on his whole crew, with several iron bands on each of his arms. They looked like bracelets, only thick and evenly spaced along the entire arm.
“What are those bands?” Emily whispered to Nicholas as they waited to be addressed by Ragnar.
“Trophy rings,” Nicholas whispered back. “Each one is the melted weapon of a worthy foe he’s killed in combat. Did you see mine?”
Nicholas pointed to a single metal band around his left bicep. Emily had seen it earlier, but she had not realized there was any significance to it.
“It’s from that orc I killed,” he smiled, his chest swelling with pride. “He was the first orc I killed in single combat, so I melted down his sword and made a trophy from it. Every viking has at least one trophy ring, but few have as many as Ragnar.”
Ragnar growled, and Nicholas and Emily went silent. He wasn’t growling at them, though. In his hands, he was fiddling with Mosley’s single-shot pistol and scowling at it.
“I suppose it’s probably worth something,” he muttered and chucked the pistol off to the side. “Well, this is a sorry load. Got a few half-starved pirates, only one of them femal
e, an immortal who will collapse if he sets foot on land—I have to say, what a lousy deal you made—and a washed up captain whose crew was about to turn on him. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more pitiful excuse for a pirate crew in my entire life! You all fought like scared goblins! You tell me you’ve all spent half a year at sea, and yet you have nothing to show for it, and now, Captain, you’re telling me you don’t even have any more shot left for this pistol?”
“You could probably recover a few from the stomachs of your comrades,” Mosley chuckled.
Ragnar lifted up an iron-plated boot and kicked Mosley square in the chest. Emily winced as Mosley gasped in pain and crashed backwards onto the deck.
“Useless warg waste,” Ragnar muttered. “Six months at sea and you didn’t even rob one merchant ship? You’re a terrible excuse for a pirate! What in Valhalla were you doing all that time?”
“He wanted to rob sirens,” Priscila answered in a hushed voice, broken from choking back tears.
After she spoke, silence fell over the group as the vikings balked in surprise and disbelief, but she just stared right back at them. Mosley did not deny her either, remaining on the ground, looking into the sky, and trying to hide the embarrassment coloring his cheeks.
The vikings broke into laughter.
“Bahahah!” Ragnar, the loudest, gripped his sides and threw his head into the air, while the others howled and slapped each other’s backs, doubling over.
Mosley gritted his teeth but kept his mouth shut. He shifted back up into a seated position and held the face of a defeated man who would not relinquish his pride.
“From sirens?” Ragnar howled in disbelief. “By the sea, Captain! HAHA! I misjudged you. I thought you a fool, but it turns out you’re mad! Really? Rob from sirens with only two women on your crew? Ha! By Valhalla, you must carry your pride in a barrel! I like you.”
