The Bond of Blood

by Kody Boye

  “I’ll get you,” the bigger boy panted, chest heaving, cords in his neck bulging and face sparked red.

  Soon enough, Odin knew, Monvich would be much too worn out to continue.

  They always said the bigger you are the harder you fall.

  The weapons master moved away from the boys and began to walk the sphere. He circled them, eyes alert, movements swift and precise. His body appeared to say, Don’t pay attention to what I’m doing. It was completely distracting, for even Odin had trouble maintaining concentration on the battle beforehand as Herald’s blade continued to swing forward and down upon him, much like the hammer he’d recently thought of that only a brutish man’s ample shoulders could wield.

  In but a moment, Odin realized just what he’d have to do.

  Ducking, he lunged forward, then threw himself back.

  Master Jordan stood no more than a few feet behind him.

  Monvich’s eyes darted to the man.

  There!

  Odin lunged.

  Before he could even begin to raise his sword to deliver the ‘killing’ hit, Monvich struck out—not with his sword, but his fist.

  Blood spurting from his nose, body flailing through the air, Odin collapsed to the ground with blood covering his chest and pain screaming throughout his body.

  “Hey! Hey!” Master Jordan cried, running forward to grab the bigger boy’s shoulders before he could get any closer. “That’s enough! That’s enough!”

  “I won!” Monvich laughed, looking down at his bloodied fist. “I fucking won!”

  “I suppose you did, but I never told you to use your fist.”

  “You told us to ‘kill’ our sparring partner.”

  Rather than speak in response, Jordan looked down at Odin, then back up to Monvich before saying, “I’m sorry I wasn’t more clear.”

  When the Monvich boy stepped to the other side of the ring and joined in with the group deemed ‘the living,’ Jordan looked at the group, sighed, then said, “All right, boys. Put your practice weapons away and head over to the lake. You need to wash the sweat off before you head in to your afternoon lessons.”

  While the other boys put their weapons away, dusted themselves off and walked off to the lake, Odin pushed himself into a sitting position and pinched the end of his nose to still the flow of blood.

  “Are you all right?” the weapon master asked, crouching down at Odin’s side.

  “Fine,” Odin grimaced. “I thought you weren’t supposed to care about us.”

  “I don’t,” the man said, “but the smaller boys who fight Herald Monvich are always easy pickings.”

  “I thought we were supposed to fight our opponents like they were going to kill us?”

  “You are, but there’s no reason to intentionally hurt or injure someone you don’t have to.” The man sighed, then turned his attention up at the fleeting images of the boys. “That young man has a wild spirit, son. He may be a bully, but he’ll make one hell of a knight someday.”

  Though Odin couldn’t respond without betraying his hurt or anger, he managed to nod, then removed his hand from his nose. “I think it stopped,” he said.

  “Good,” the man replied. “Go bathe. You’ve got a while before the first bell rings. Get yourself cleaned off, then head inside for your lesson.”

  Odin stood, looked toward the pond in the distance, and sighed.

  Hopefully nothing would come of this.

  Dozens of boys played and swam without a care in the world. Some stayed to the side, nursing fingers that could be sprained or broken. Others fingered cuts and scrapes caused by the rough edge of the wooden swords. It would have seemed, to anyone looking upon this small group, that they were only children—young, unafraid, and all the less ashamed of their naked bodies. Many could have been staring, silently taking note, and not a single one of them would have cared, for they played and splashed and cavorted with one another as if there was nothing wrong with these open displays of emotions.

  He thought it some kind of passage, this nudity and this endeavor. Most every boy had a partner he splashed or waded with. Some discussed the first day of weapons practice and how well it may or may not have been; others pondered over smaller things, particularly the maidens that took refuge at the castle alongside them, tending the livestock in the areas beyond the castle or learning prayers from convent nuns. Some even boasted of their prowess with the sword, taking into account that they, unlike the others, were far superior to anyone.

  It wasn’t until that moment that Odin had any trouble or embarrassment bathing with other boys. It was, in the end, all skin—what did he have to worry about? However, worry started to get the best of him, as the boys, though young, showed signs of maturing. Stubble, hair under the arms, around the areolas and down by the groin were only a few of the things he noticed.

  You’re going to have to bathe eventually, he finally decided. Just ignore the difference and act like you’re just like them.

  Though he knew in truth and sympathy that he was not like any of these royal children, he could push those differences aside and make his way into their midst.

  After pulling his shirt off, he bent to unlace his shoes, then slid down his trousers and loincloth before wading into the water.

  Hardly any of the boys took notice. Some, curious or interested, glanced at or watched him, but their eyes didn’t stay for long. Their whispers, however, outnumbered any other physical acknowledgment, for it seemed as Odin waded deeper into the water that he was taken notice of even though he was nothing more than a commoner. It made him feel special, in a way. He’d never had any boyhood friends. Maybe now that he’d grown up a little he could make some.

  Just when he thought someone would begin to approach him, they returned to their own conversation, to the friends they already knew.

  Odin sighed.

  Amidst all these young men with muscles and stubble, with structures and hair in places he hadn’t, he couldn’t help but feel like the ugly duckling of the nest.

  “Hey,” the boy named Herald Monvich said, taking notice of him almost immediately before wading through the water and toward him. “You stirred up a lot of shit over the way I took you out.”

  Dumbfounded and unsure what to say, Odin merely stood there, watching the bigger boy with eyes clouded and dazed.

  “Are you going to answer me,” the bigger boy growled, “or are you too little to do that too?”

  The majority of the boys chuckled. Odin’s gaze darted over them, calculating their motives. He could see the greed in their eyes, the desire that willed them to fight and spill blood in water otherwise clean. Any sort of physical confrontation would have surely satisfied them.

  “I didn’t stir anything up,” Odin said, keeping his hands at his side to be as nonthreatening as possible. “You beat me fair.”

  “Yeah,” Herald smirked, “I did, but Master Jordan didn’t think so.”

  Odin stepped back. Herald stepped forward.

  “I got you good,” the boy said. “Hitting your nose so hard it bled.”

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Shut up! I’m not going to listen to some boy.”

  “You’re younger than I am!”

  “At least I’ve got hair on my chest. By God, a girl has more hair down there than you do.”

  This sent the group of boys into fits of laughter. Some even stumbled and fell into the water, where they emerged to splash others as if no violent confrontation was about to happen. While the event set off the boys’ continued play, Odin and Herald merely stared at each other, eyes ablaze with hate so vast it could have burned the world down.

  “You’re just a bully,” Odin said.

  The boys gasped at his sudden words.

  This time, it was Odin’s turn to smirk.

  Got you, he thought.

  “Bastard,” Herald growled.

  Monvich lashed out and grabbed Odin by the neck.

  When he tried to kick out and disa
rm the boy, Herald slapped the back of his neck, grabbed his long, untended hair, then forced his head underwater.

  Immediately, water shot up his nose and through his mouth.

  Gasping, trying to breathe when he obviously couldn’t, water shot down Odin’s throat and into his lungs.

  “You like that?” the bigger boy roared, tossing Odin’s head back by his hair. “Want me to do it again?”

  “Leave me alone!” he cried.

  Herald repeated the gesture, but this time Odin managed to take a quick breath before the boy submerged him. He fought with all his might—tossing, turning, kicking and slapping the water as desperately as he could—but nothing seemed to come from it. Herald then straddled his hips and forced a knee into his lower back, pushing him deeper under the water.

  I’m going to drown, he thought. I’m going to drown and no one’s going to know who did it.

  He tried to fight, but the strength had left his lungs, the aggression from his heart and the agony his mind. He closed his eyes and continued to hold his breath for dear life.

  Come on, he whispered. Help me.

  Above, light shined down through the water and cast shards of color across the bed of the pond.

  A fish swam by.

  A group of minnows skirted just beneath his body.

  His fear, his anger, his hurt, pride, sorrow—all strung together.

  A flutter of movement crossed Odin’s chest and rushed down both his arms.

  The water exploded.

  Herald released him.

  Clawing his way to the surface, his breath all but lost and his eyes stung by wild water, Odin emerged just in time to see a geyser erupting out of the center of the pond, its height vast and its subsequent rain so heavy it surely would have trapped anyone beneath the water had they been there. Boys screamed, ran, grappled for their clothes as they rushed toward the castle and away from the obvious source of magic. Throughout all this, Odin struggled to push his way onto land and to all fours. He pounded his chest, coughed water from his lungs, then turned his head up just in time to see the tall, stocky form of Herald Monvich turning from his flight to face him.

  “This isn’t over!” the bigger boy screamed, naked and shivering in fear. “I’ll kill you for this, Karussa. I’ll kill you!”

  Water continued to spill from Odin’s lungs as the last of Herald’s taunts faded.

  For a brief moment, he thought he would simply pass out on the pond’s shore, left to his own devices and possibly to the death that would soon follow.

  When Odin coughed up the last bit of liquid from his lungs, he took a long, deep breath, then turned his head to the sky.

  The sun seemed to be shining down from the heavens to mark his passage.

  Despite the pain in his chest that swelled like the flow of the ocean, Odin went to his afternoon lesson without a second thought. Seated upon a long, wooden bench in the back of the room, where a desk before him extended to the far wall would allow multiple boys to be seated at, he turned his attention down to the book before him and realized, with a nervous bout of pride, that he would actually be studying in a situation unlike the homeschooling his father had given him.

  This is different, he decided.

  Pursing his lips, he continued to watch the boys enter through the doorway and seat themselves along the benches, their hands pressed forward and their attention set to the front of the room—where, behind a desk and almost unnoticed, a professor sat, his name declared as Artlock in chalk script that ran across the board.

  When the morning bell chimed for the third time that day, the professor rose to greet his audience.

  “Hello,” Professor Artlock said, pressing his hands behind his back as he turned his attention toward the still-skittering boys entering in through the doorway. “My name is Professor Artlock, and over the course of the next few weeks and months, I will be outlining a study program that will include all the basic teachings you need to know both as a knight and an individual schooled under the Ornalan study system, including but not limited to: History, Mathematics, the Written and Read word and, of course, basic survival instincts that you should be more than knowledgeable of when you enter the field with your knight master within the next few years.”

  At this, the professor turned and began to scrawl a multitude of lines across the board, which Odin found almost impossible to read from such a faraway distance. He considered moving forward to be closer, but when the man turned and offered the room a somber look, he decided it might be best not to rise instead.

  He’ll say what he needs to, he decided.

  When the professor turned to face them, not a word was spoken within the entire classroom.

  “All right,” Artlock said. “As you will notice, we have today’s book of study set before us. General Studies of History will outline the construction of the kingdom, the Soloman family line’s rise to power and the eventual figures that ruled over our kingdom over the given course of time.

  “Why do we need to study?” one of the boys called out. “We’re knights, not scholars!”

  “A good knight is not a stupid one,” the professor replied, opening his mouth to reveal bright teeth. “It is for that reason that you will divide your days both with training and general reading, as well as completing the assigned homework and returning it to me each and every morning. Are we understood?”

  The boys gave collective nods and murmurs of approval.

  “Very well then,” Artlock said, turning to face the board. “Now, I would like you to turn to your General Studies of History book and flip to the table of contents, where we’ll be looking over the origins of our country and just how the capital was created.”

  Over the course of the next few days, Odin went to weapons training and afternoon schooling without much trouble. With no threat of Herald Monvich’s reappearance anytime in the near future, he found himself settling into a routine that both comforted and settled him despite the unease he felt around his royal, more-prestigious peers. Early mornings before training were spent with Master Jordan, improving his skills in a private, practiced environment, while afternoons lay spread out before him like a grand dish meant to be sampled. Most homework was done easily and in the hours before dinner, turned in the next day and graded efficiently and without much trouble. He was referred to by Artlock as, ‘Exceptionally well-read’ and praised on almost every assignment for his intelligence.

  On one particularly-rainy day, when weapons training was replaced with an extra-long schooling session, Odin found himself in a predicament where he felt as though he needed to talk to an authority figure for fear that, should Herald try to assault him again, he might end up dead.

  But you’re not a tattler, he thought, sighing. What are you going to do about that?

  Either way, he needed to come up with a solution—now, while it still dwelled on his conscience.

  When the extra-long study session reached its halfway point and Artlock allowed the boys to walk the halls and stretch their legs, Odin approached the desk and waited for the man to turn before confronting him directly.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello, Odin.” Artlock smiled. “I must say, I do enjoy reading your assignments. You’re so well read.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I was actually wondering if I could have permission to go talk with High Mage Daughtry,” he said, crossing his arms over your chest. “I just don’t know where to start.”

  “What reason might you have to talk with Magic-Master Daughtry?”

  “I’m one of his students and… well… I need to talk to him about something personal, if that’s all right.”

  “Though I’m reluctant to let you leave class, especially when we’re deep into reading on our history, I know you’ll do perfectly well in catching up on your own time. Please—go right ahead. Ask a guard to escort you to the magic offices.”

  “Thank you, sir.”


  With a quick bow of his head, Odin turned and made his way into the hall—where, directly beside the door, he approached a guard and asked to be escorted to the magic offices.

  “The magic offices?” the guard asked. “What reason do you have going there?”

  “I’m a mage, sir.”

  “Oh.” The guard paused. “All right then. Follow me.”

  The man led Odin through several interweaving corridors that over the duration of their walk began to grow increasingly obscure. The windows all but gone so deep within the castle, the halls bearing little-to-no decoration and the wallpaper dour and appearing as if it had not been replaced for some time—Odin found himself wondering why, of all the important places within the castle, these halls would go untended, but regardless, brushed it off and pushed himself through the halls, toward the rooms with doors that possessed golden placards upon them.

  “Here you are,” the guard said. “I trust you have rightful permission to be here, otherwise I may have to report you.”

  “I can be here, sir. Thank you for leading me.”

  The man gave one last nod before turning and making his way back down the halls.

  Knowing not how he would return to his afternoon classes without an escort, Odin shook his head, leaned forward, then knocked three times before returning to his original position.

  Moments passed without any signs of acknowledgment.

  Come on, he thought. Don’t have made me come all this way for nothing.

  Just as he was beginning to think it would be best to return to his classes, the door opened, revealing Daughtry’s tall, lanky form. “Odin,” he said.

  “Sir,” he replied.

  “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in class?”

  “Actually… I wanted to talk to you about something. Something private.”

  “Come in, come in.”

  After stepping into the room with the magic master and waiting for him to close the door behind them, Odin seated himself in the chair opposite the desk, unsure what to say in order to initiate the conversation.