Aela steps closer and I feel her hand gently bump mine. I refuse to look at her, though she gazes up at me imploringly. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “Kadmus…” She looks down at the ground and then back up at me, but I continue to avoid her gaze. “I am so sorry.”
My nose twitches as my lip tightens. My eyes well but before anything can fall, I roar and swing my hammer as hard as I can at the nearest tree. The bough breaks and swings helplessly on the last few strands of fiber that connect it to the trunk.
“I shouldn’t have come…” she mutters. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” I blurt suddenly, dropping the weapon. She stops and turns her head to look at me. I feel tears coming on again and force them away as I beg weakly, “Please don’t go.”
“Why?” she says quietly, stepping cautiously towards me.
I collapse onto a log. The answer evades me, but at the same time wants to jump out of my mouth and make a fool of me. Fortunately, when I find the answer, I have enough sense to think about what I am going to say.
“Because I need you.”
She sits on the log next to me. “Why would you need me?” she asks in disbelief.
Once again I think. “Why wouldn’t I?” I whisper. Shaking my head, and feeling rather foolish, I lift myself from the log and stand a few paces away.
“Because…” she says. I look at her, waiting for her answer. “I’m not…” Her mouth shuts again and she looks around, anywhere but me. Then, taking a deep breath, she makes to say something, but once again pauses and shuts her mouth. Finally she says simply, “I’m not the perfect person you think I am.”
“No one is,” I reply. “But we love them anyway.”
She inhales sharply and doesn’t speak for several seconds. When she does, her voice is soft. “Do you remember when I asked you how?”
“Which time?” I’m surprised sarcasm has slipped into my voice at a time such as this.
“How you could love them so much?”
I nod.
“I think I know now.”
I lean against a tree and study the hammer on the ground. “Explain,” I mutter.
She hesitates before saying, “Your family… was the first place I actually felt like I had a friend. I felt like I was a part of your family. I’ve never had that anywhere before or since. You had no idea who I was or where I came from, yet you took me in and cared for me. You actually carried me most of the way to Terrace.” She smiles when the thought comes to mind.
“You wanted none of that,” I add. “When you woke up I mean.”
Her grin broadens. “You get my point though? I didn’t understand it before. Who would do something like that for someone they didn’t know? For the first time in my life I actually felt…” My gaze coaxes the last word from her. “…loved.”
I only nod.
She continues when she sees I have nothing to say. “I also see why love is…” I notice she chooses her words carefully. “…considered weakness by some. For the first time I feel grief. True grief. Not only for Nathaniel, but for your father. And all the people I have injured through one way or another.”
I nod again.
She pauses. “I’m not saying this to praise myself,” she says tentatively, looking down. “I’m saying this to praise you.”
I shake my head and a smile tugs at my lip, like she told a bad joke. “Why would you be praising me?”
She thinks, but only for a short moment. “Because you taught me how to love.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
This time she replies without the slightest hesitation. “You need it most now.”
My steel heart lurches. I feel it soften inside of me. A great weight is lifted from my chest. Then she hugs me around the middle.
I exhale deliberately. As the darkness leaves with the air, I feel something else enter. The pure light finds my maw of a heart, eaten away by grief. Then, impossibly, the maw begins to heal.
The light slowly trickles into the maw, filling every crack and crevice within. I am overcome with the smallest hope that she can fill it. The darkness has not yet won.
My arms raise themselves and I return the embrace, holding her close.
I don’t know how long we stand there. No words are spoken, but I still enjoy every second of it.
She leaves me in the forest with a comforting smile and nod. Her hand lingers for a second on my own, but she pulls away and walks up the path to the city. I gaze at her, wondering who in the world I had run into that day at Dragongate Bridge. Then she disappears behind the trees.
I resume my fight with the tree.
It begins to rain. The drizzle is light and I stay relatively dry underneath the canopy of leaves. It is not the wet, however, that drives me back into the city. It’s hunger.
The forest has a different sort of life about it during a rainstorm, even one as mild as this. There are no bugs, for instance. The gnats that had been nipping at me relentlessly have retreated into their dry homes.
The greenery is always fresher as well, during the rain. The green is brighter and in some places more verdant than when the sky and ground are dry. I can see the emerald veins of wide leaves and the diamond drops of water racing down them carefully. Always the patter of light rain on the green.
I look up to the sky and allow a few drops to run their course down my face. The dirt path becomes damp, but not muddy, darkening the loamy dirt.
Shafts of golden sunlight beam down upon the scene, but they disappear and reappear as the dark clouds move. The western sky appears equally as dark. The rest of the night will not be nearly this enjoyable.
A bird chirrups in discontent at a droplet that plops down onto its tiny head. Then it flies away.
“So much beauty,” I remark quietly, absorbing the wondrous scene. My gaze falls down upon my hammer, which I still hold loosely at my side. “And so much pain,” I whisper. I had cleaned it just this morning of the blood that clung to it greedily. The blood of how many men? Even if I had the mental capacity to count during a battle, I would be emotionally stricken and rendered useless. “Too many,” I answer aloud.
I wonder how long it will go? How long before one of us meets our match? Nathaniel’s words ring in my head like a shrieking bell.
There was no match. That evil scab of a Jarl cheated. There was no match that was met. It was trickery. Lies and coldblooded murder. When I find him he shall have no mercy from me.
I exit the forest and cross the short plain to the gate of the city, which stands open to allow me inside. My hammer swings threateningly beside me, and nobody gives me more than a second glance for fear of beginning something that shouldn’t be begun.
I glance up to my right once I enter the gate. We have left the remains of the ballistae and done nothing to repair them. Fine.
The city is silent, recovering from the battle that had shaken its streets in the night. Men try their best to go about their work. Women and children stay in their homes. Soldiers clean up the last of the bodies.
The houses are dark in the shadow of the black clouds. The rain begins to pick up. The droplets get bigger.
My boots clomp on the stone of the street authoritatively. I avoid all eyes that turn to look at me; I have no business with them. The only business I care for at the moment is my business with Sythian, who decided to go running at our last deal.
The gates of Balgr’s Bastion are closed, but I don’t stop to wait for the guards to open them. It won’t be locked. Why would it be? They are expecting me.
I bang through the doors of the castle, making the guards on either side nearly jump from their greaves. One of them blows out his cheeks. Once he thinks I cannot hear, he says to his companion, “Someone pissed him off.”
“Really?” says the other.
With the slightest of sneers I turn left down the hall to find the stairs. I refuse to take the right-hand stairwell.
Now that I’m not in the midst of a life-threatening situation, I take
the time to study the interior of the Bastion. The stone of the floor and walls is white and smooth. There are no cracks, and the crevices between blocks are few and far between. A red carpet is rolled out down the middle of the hallway and up the stairs.
At the base and tops of the walls, there’s a thin layer of dark grey stone. The hall is arched.
Some soldiers have been tasked with taking down the Diagrall flags and banners. We will burn them publicly and replace them with our own emblems.
The stairs climb up several stories. With stony eyes I pass the floor onto which I had chased Sythian. The next floor up, I finally turn right from the stairs and into the arched hallway.
The Jarl waits behind a large pair of wooden double doors. When it comes to castles, I think, we’re not really much for interior variety are we?
I pound in the doors without asking permission to enter. The guards jump a foot in the air, like I had smacked their backsides rather than the door.
Apparently I startled the Jarl as well because he violently looks up from whatever he was doing, his eyes wide and his hand gripping his sword tightly. “I’m here,” I announce.
“Apparently,” mutters Genevieve, taking her hand from the hilt of her sword.
The room is long; large enough that both of the titanic windows I had seen from the port take up most of the back wall. The ceiling is peaked and crossed with enormous wooden beams. I stand underneath a balcony that extends around either side of the room. A series of arches with marble columns, which stand out beautifully against the dark stone, support the balcony and create a sort of hallway within the room.
Without looking away, the Jarl clears his throat, his eyes still wide. Then he seems to recall the circumstance and, sniffing, says, “Ah yes! Kadmus!” His brow furrows. “I… but I haven’t sent for you yet.”
“I know.”
A little taken aback, Jarl Hralfar proceeds anyway. “I thought you should know that I spoke with Captain Alastair. He was anxious to leave and did so promptly after I paid him.”
“As I expected. He wasn’t happy when I didn’t fork the money over the second we made port.”
“So he voiced to me. I would suggest being a little clearer in your agreements next time to avoid situations such as that. That’s not worth losing a valuable ally.”
I nod. “Of course, Jarl. Any sign of Sythian?” The name slithers between my teeth.
Jarl Hralfar notices my vehemence, but unperturbed says, “No.”
“Do you know where he escaped to?”
“There is strong evidence Gurbog Sythian escaped through the dock. We have several witnesses and it’s completely plausible, given the length of the banner and cords outside that window. He could easily have reached the wall and run down to the nearest ship. With his condition, he could not have sailed away alone. If he did manage to commandeer a ship, he could have gone any direction, though I’d bet on Weathercrest.”
“Where’s Weathercrest?”
“Tip of the Vjurrkstad Peninsula, at the edge of Khaoth’s Gulf. The last port you can make before hitting the open ocean.”
“How fast can we get a ship ready?”
The Jarl sighs and raises his hands behind his head. He looks out the window at the port, and then turns and states, “We won’t be following him.”
“What?” I object. “We had Fearclan’s second in command in our grasp and we let him slip through our fingers? You’re going to let him escape?!”
“There’s nothing we can do, Kadmus,” the Jarl says calmly.
“Yes there is!” I argue. “We can chase him down, take his ship and kill him! End it!”
“That’s assuming we can catch up to him, if he actually did escape by ship-”
“You yourself concluded that-”
“I don’t want to siege one of the most well-defended cities in all of-”
“We can’t allow him to-”
“ENOUGH!” the Jarl barks. I fall silent. He takes a deep breath, but before he can say anything I breathe a single word.
“Sorry.”
He shakes his head. “I understand. You have lost someone close to you, and you want to find vengeance. However I am sorry to say that I cannot risk chasing something that may not be there. We cannot spare the men or the ships.”
I nod. “What then is our next plan of action?” I ask humbly.
“Archeantus will get in touch with us soon,” Hralfar responds, “But I’m not going to wait for him. Every day we waste here is a day that more men are lost in the west. We will leave men here to fortify the city and ensure it does not get retaken by Diagrall when we leave. It would be especially susceptible to a sea attack, which is the likely direction, so I am looking into building ballistae or catapults on this end of the city to thwart such an attack.”
“I see,” I reply. “Which city will we march to?”
“We will not be marching,” Hralfar replies. He smirks at my momentary confusion. “We will be sailing. It’s much faster. We can sail north, take Fort Rocksabre, and march from there to Poalai. I am sure Lord Archeantus would appreciate the reinforcement.”
“As am I,” I reply. “When do we move out?”
“I was thinking within the week. Finalize our fortifications here and get a move on. By then Archeantus will have heard of our victory and will be expecting us in Watervale.”
“Good,” I reply. “Is there anything else you require?”
“No Captain,” he says. “I believe that is all.”
I bow. “I’ll take my leave then.”
The doors bang open and I suddenly understand why the others had found it so startling. Quickly my mind races to other things, however, when I realize who it is that has burst in upon our meeting.
“You’re going to want to see this,” says Captain Alastair. “Caught the dirty stowaway sneaking around on our ship.”
Two sailors drag a bloodied man into the room. He wears a sweat-stained tunic and dark pants, his matted black hair falling about his face. They throw him to the floor and the ragged man rises to his knees. His wrists are bound.
“Sythian,” I growl.
“Hello Captain,” Gurbog spits. Somehow my honorable title becomes an insult under his slanderous tongue. “Been a while.”
The Prisoner
One of the sailors hits him over the head for speaking.
“Don’t!” I bark. Then I mutter with an evil look at Sythian, “That’s my job.”
I can hear the Jarl’s voice as I advance on Sythian, drawing my hammer. The words don’t register until my hand is almost upon his throat, “Captain, halt! Now!”
Reluctantly I stop and eye Jarl Hralfar with an are-you-serious look. “Why can’t I kill him?” I ask politely.
Hralfar ignores me and looks up to Captain Alastair. “Thank you,” he says. “I believe we can handle it from here.”
“No compensation for my efforts?” haggles the Captain gruffly.
Exasperated, with a roll of his eyes the Jarl asks bluntly, “What do you want now, Alastair?”
The captain’s lip turns up. With purpose he struts forward to Gurbog. Then he kicks the fallen Jarl squarely in the back, making sure to use the heel of his knee-high boot.
Pain contorts Gurbog’s face as he writhes in slow motion on the floor. Every second or two he emits a pitiful grunt or moan as he struggles to get back to his knees.
The captain nods curtly and straightens his pompous collared overcoat. “That’s all, my Lord,” he says. “I’ll be off.”
Hralfar nods stiffly. “Thank you, Captain. Good thing you noticed him before you got too far, isn’t it?”
Alastair nods and with a bow says, “Good day.” When he rises he tips his feathered hat to me. Then he leaves with his two sailors trailing behind him.
Gurbog looks up with bloodshot eyes from his kneeling position on the stone. His tongue caresses the split on his lip, which appears to have reopened when his face hit the floor. Though he has tried to wash the blood off, his c
lothes are still stained on his right hip and chest, as if he dribbled blood all over his front. There is a stream of black, freshly dried, clinging to his upper lip that falls around his mouth and down his chin. What are you waiting for, Dragonhammer? his gaze says. I’m right here.
“Let me kill him,” I command. “End it right here.” My eyes never leave Gurbog’s.
“He could yet be valuable to us,” Hralfar asserts. “He has information. Or we could use him to barter for prisoners or money. We’ll see how much he’s worth.”
“And if that’s nothing?” I growl.
“If he proves to have no use… I suppose you may do with him what you wish.”
The corner of my lip goes up and I speak to Sythian with my eyes. You hear that, Gurbog?
His gaze doesn’t falter.
“Until then?” I ask.
Hralfar shakes his head. “To the dungeons with him.”
“Oh, that’s original,” Gurbog complains as the guards take hold of him on either side and force him to his feet. “Always the dungeons.”
“Shut it,” I snarl. Slowly his lips tighten. “Move,” I rumble.
“Never the bedrooms,” he adds as we begin into the hall. “What’s the name of the lass you’ve taken a liking to? I would much rather share a room than have my own dungeon. I suspect she must have a room that you visit in the wee hours of the night-”
The back of my hand connects solidly with his cheek. Unfortunately, because I am not allowed to kill him, I do not allow myself to strike with all the force I have, as that would break his sorry little neck.
However, my gauntlet does plant a new slash across his cheek. “Shut it,” I growl. Sythian’s lips purse, but he does not look away from me.
I look up at the guards. “Move on.”
I walk behind them the entire way down. Gurbog stumbles down the stairs and leans heavily on the guard to his right. He doesn’t use his right leg at all if he can help it. The corner of my lip rises at the thought. Serves you right.
Eventually we pass into a level with no windows. The guards move to exit the stairwell, but I stop them. “One more,” I say.
Dragonhammer: Volume II Page 22
