A Warrior's Burden: Book One of Saga of the Known Lands

by Jacob Peppers

  She sighed. “Hank had the boys over a week ago. I’m pretty sure they left something or another.”

  He smiled. “It’s good to see you, Maeve.”

  She stared at him, fat and in purple trousers, his shirt and pants covered in dust from the road, and found, to her surprise, that despite everything, despite all the times she had considered strangling him, it was good to see him. She shook her head. “Come on, you bastard.”

  ***

  A short time later they were sitting at the small table in Maeve’s home, using the only two chairs which had survived Hank’s regular drunken rages. She held a cup of hot tea in her hand while Chall took a large, unceremonious gulp from the half-drunk bottle her husband and his friends had left. He opened his mouth as if he would speak then paused, beginning to brush dust off his shirt and pants, straightening his droopy, stained collar, making a big production of it. One of the things she most definitely hadn’t missed about the magician was his need to primp and be the center of attention, even if that attention led to black eyes and headaches—black eyes for him and headaches for anyone who happened to be unfortunate enough to listen to his ramblings.

  She took a sip of her tea then frowned, putting it down. Never had liked the stuff. She’d tried it often enough, but like so many aspects of her life, she could never seem to do the thing that she knew was best for her. Proof of that much, at least, sat directly in front of her, purple trousers and all. “You figure you’ll get around to the story anytime soon, or should I take a quick nap?”

  Chall paused from where he was running a finger across his teeth and winced. Then, finally, he proceeded to tell her about the vision, having to be prodded, from time to time, to get back on track and stop cursing some random innkeeper who he had apparently—and to no one’s surprise but his own—managed to piss off enough to take a candlestick to him. As Maeve listened to him take forever dancing around the point as if it were a game he was playing, she found herself envious of the woman as she wouldn’t have minded taking a few swings at him herself.

  But once he’d finished, she was no longer envious. Instead, she was worried. Worried and mad—furious, really, though at who or at what she wasn’t sure—and more than a little confused. It was difficult, in fact, for her to know what exactly she was feeling, so twisted up were her emotions. On the one hand, she had told herself that she was done with all of that, with all those people. From that side, she thought it was only right that someone was trying to kill her ex-commander, thought that it was a wonder there wasn’t already a career path for that exact thing, that folks couldn’t take classes on it. On the other, though, she found herself worried, worried for him, mostly, and that, she believed, was what made her angry. He was a murderer. A cruel murderer, an adulterer, and worse, a man who had gloried in his own sins. She should not care what happened to him at the least or even should have wished to help those seeking his life.

  But she did care. Partly this was because the same men which sought his life sought hers as well. Mostly, though, it was because she cared for him. For reasons she could not explain even to herself, she cared for him, and the thought of something happening to him did not sit well with her, not at all. And that wasn’t even to mention the boy, whatever poor youth had found himself sucked up in the man’s wake, much the same way that she and Chall and the rest had. It wasn’t that they had chosen to follow him exactly. Certainly she did not remember ever making a conscious decision to do so. Instead, it was as if the man were some great whirlwind or cyclone driving its way across the land and she and those others who they had traveled with—some alive, most not—had simply been pulled along by the force of him, had been swept up by his drive and his personality which, while it could have never been said to be kind, was certainly powerful.

  Chall watched her silently, a question in his eyes, one which he voiced a moment later. “What do we do, Maeve?” He paused, smiling mischievously. “Or should I call you Lorrie? It’s what the ogre called you, isn’t it? Lorrie?”

  She frowned. “Do you really think this is the most pressing thing right now, Chall?”

  He shrugged. “Just never thought of you as a ‘Lorrie’ that’s all. Though I also never would have thought to have found you on your knees in the dirt, picking weeds either. And I don’t even want to get started on the way that big bastard talked to you. The Maeve I knew—”

  “The Maeve you knew,” she interrupted, “has a price on her head that could beggar some of the realm’s wealthiest noblemen, thanks in no small part to you and your constant inability to keep your mouth shut when you should. After all, not all of us are illusionists who can fake our deaths. I wonder, did you go to your own funeral? It seems like the sort of thing you would do.”

  He winced. “I’m afraid I missed the whole affair. I was, as I recall, a bit drunk at the time.”

  “Surprising,” she said dryly. “Anyway, I wouldn’t worry about it—I was there, and it seems to me that just about everyone missed it.”

  “Fine, fine, so maybe I’m not exactly overburdened with friends. Still, to see you like this—”

  “No, Chall,” she growled. “No. I won’t talk about my husband or about anything else with you. That’s my business and mine alone. We’ve all dealt with our past in our own ways, found paths to move forward in our own ways. Yours, it seems”—she paused, glancing at his protruding gut—“mostly in the form of ale and food.”

  “And prostitutes,” he offered without a hint of shame—it seemed the bastard still didn’t have any—“let’s not forget that.”

  She sighed. “Have I told you just how pleased I am to see you?”

  “Believe me, I didn’t want to come here…” He trailed off as she frowned. “I mean, I wanted to see you—of course, who wouldn’t, you’re such a pleasant person. But…what I mean…”

  “I know what you mean,” she said. And that was true. She knew exactly how the vision’s contents made him feel, for she thought it likely that she was feeling much the same herself.

  They trailed into silence then, both of them thinking their own thoughts, and just for something to do, Maeve took a sip of her tea. Terrible stuff, normally, but she could taste none of it now.

  “What are we going to do, Mae?” Chall asked quietly.

  No one had called her that in a very long time, no one had ever called her that, in fact, except for Chall. She’d always hated it, that name, and had long since lost track of the arguments they’d had over it—more than a few of which had ended when she’d finally had enough and reached for one of the knives she’d always kept. Now, though, she found that after fifteen years, she’d missed it. She had not, however, missed the way he was staring at her now, the same way that a child might stare at a parent when they’d had a bad dream. The child confident that the parent would know what to do, that the parent could make the monsters go away.

  What are we going to do, Mae? A single sentence, uttered in a moment, but one that threatened to turn her life, the one she had spent the last fifteen years building, on its head. “What life?” she muttered.

  “I’m sorry?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing.” And that was an answer not just to his question, she realized, but to her own as well. What life? Nothing. No life at all, that was the truth. She realized, then, that she had been so focused on staying hidden, so focused on keeping her life that she had traded it one piece at a time in the name of safety, a particularly large part on her wedding day to Hank. For years, she had tolerated the man’s drunken pawings and drunken rages, pretending to be a meek, frightened wife because she thought that, in this way, she would keep herself safe, so that she might live. After all, as Chall had pointed out, no one could have ever expected to find Maeve the Marvelous in a shithole of a village, meekly accepting the constant rebukes of her overbearing husband. She had sought to keep her life and, in seeking it, had lost it.

  She realized another truth then, a particularly unwelcome one. In the last fifteen years, she had
done very few things of which she was proud, very few things which she could look back on with anything but shame. Over fifteen years, she had transformed herself, had metamorphosed the way a caterpillar might turn into a butterfly. Only she had not turned from an ugly insect into a beautiful butterfly. Instead, she had turned herself from a confident, brave woman, one after whom men lusted even while they were terrified of her, into a mewling, scraping wife, one who was, in fact, little better than a servant.

  Chall had asked her how the Maeve he had known could marry Hank, could put up with the things she did, and the fact was that such a woman could not. So she had allowed herself to become something else, something worse. Years ago, before her head had such a price on it, and she had exiled herself from civilized society, Maeve had done many things. She had been known throughout the land—Maeve the Marvelous, they had called her, and though she had always hated that name, it had stood for something. She had stood for something, something more than pulled weeds and being a punching bag for her husband when he had it in mind to vent his anger and she was closest at hand.

  True, she had done some terrible things back then, but she had done some fine ones too, ones which her position and her power—not to mention her reputation—had allowed her to do. For the last fifteen years, she had hardly done anything at all, just watched her life slip by as if it were someone else’s, watched it like it was sand in an hourglass. “What are we going to do?” she asked, the decision already made, feeling better, more herself than she had in a very long time. “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do, Chall. We’re going to help them.”

  He gave her a small smile that looked more like a wince, as if he had known what she was going to say long before she said it. And, likely, he had. Chall was many things, but a fool was not among them. “How?”

  No arguing, no telling her that he would have nothing to do with it and that it was on her, only the simple question. She loved him, in that moment, for perhaps she had turned herself into a caterpillar but now, she would turn herself into a butterfly once more, if she could. And if she managed it, she would have Chall to thank, for he, and his coming, was her cocoon. She brushed the disgusting cup of tea off the table, oblivious to the sound of the small cup cracking as it struck the wooden floor, then she leaned forward, eyeing him. “I’ll tell you how.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  People tip-toed around him, scared to talk, that they might say the wrong thing, scared to remain silent, that he might take offense. But they did not know him, none of them, at least not as I did.

  For as terrifying as his anger was, it was not the worst of him.

  No, he was not at his most dangerous when he was angry.

  For when he held the Fey king’s head before him at feast, gobbets of blood dripping from it onto the table, he was not growling or cursing, not shouting or threatening.

  No. He was laughing.

  —Excerpt from journal of Maeve the Marvelous regarding Prince Bernard, known as “The Crimson Prince”

  Matt followed the big man’s back as they trudged through the snow-laden ground of the Black Woods. They had traveled so for over a day, heading south. He knew that much only because his father—or the man who had claimed to be his father—had taught him to read the stars long ago, in case he ever got lost. He did not know why they headed south just as he did not know the answer to the thousands of other questions pressing on his mind. He had tried to ask Cutter, at first, about what the green demon had said, what it had meant when it called him Kingslayer and Destroyer and Hero, but Cutter had avoided the question. Since then, he had not bothered even doing that, choosing instead not to answer Matt at all.

  And so, they walked in silence, as they had for the last day and a half, the big man saying nothing except for the night before when it had been time for them to break camp and then only, “We’ll stop here.” That and nothing else.

  Being here, in this place, in the cold that seemed to penetrate him all the way into his bones no matter how many clothes he wore or how much he bundled up at night, with only his silent, brooding companion for company, Matt missed his family, his loneliness a terrible ache in his chest. He was not angry, not any longer. He was only sad. Perhaps they had not been his real family. Perhaps they had even taken money to watch over him as Cutter claimed, but what did that matter? They had watched over him, after all, had treated him as family, had loved him—or at least pretended to—as much as, perhaps even more, than any of the other parents of the village had loved their own children.

  He missed his mother’s smile, the one he had always thought of as just for him, missed her asking him what he wanted to eat for breakfast. He missed his friends, too, missed carefree days spent fishing in the summer thaw, laughing and telling jokes and lying about which village girl they’d kissed with no bigger worries than that someone would call them on it. He had always hated his life, envied those other boys whose mothers and fathers had decided that life in the remote village of Brighton was not to their taste and who had chosen to take their chances among civilization. He had watched those families leave angrily, angry mostly at his mother who had refused, who had told him that their place, his place, was in Brighton.

  He had always asked her why, why they must stay in such a gods-forsaken village with snow and nothing else, and she had always refused to answer. Except, that was, for one time when she had grown cross at his insistent, petulant demands, and had finally told him that they stayed because of a promise. She had clearly not meant to say it—that much had been obvious in her expression—but no matter how much he had pestered, she had said no more than that. And now, he would never know.

  He wasn’t aware he was crying until the wind struck his face, and he felt the cold dampness on his cheeks. He glanced up at Cutter, terrified that the man would notice, as for reasons he could not explain, even to himself, the man’s regard mattered more to him than he cared admit. He needn’t have worried, though. Cutter only trudged forward, the axe slung across his back in a sling he had fashioned the night before when Matt had lain down to sleep. He marched forward as if there was nothing else in the world, as if he had no hopes or dreams, no regrets or any feeling at all except for some unknown impetus which drove him onward.

  Matt had had a family once, and truly his or not, it had been a family. He’d had parents that loved him, a mother that sang him lullabies when he’d had a bad dream, and a father who’d bounced him on his knee and played horsey. Now, he had nothing. Nothing except for the man in front of him who seemed as cold, as unforgiving and unfeeling as the landscape which surrounded them. “I miss them.”

  The words were out of his mouth before he realized it, and Cutter turned regarding him with a blank expression. He might have been thinking anything. “Yes.”

  “We should have left,” Matt said, finding that now that he’d started, he was unable to keep himself from speaking, if for no other reason than to derive some small comfort from the sound of a human voice in this strange, alien place.

  “Left what?”

  “The village!” Matt said, shouting the words. “I told her, my mom, a hundred times that we should leave. I wanted to go to the city, to see the world, not spend my life stuck in some backwater village like Brighton, but she refused. She always said we couldn’t, said it wasn’t safe.”

  “She was right to say so.”

  “But what does that mean?” Matt demanded. “Sure, it wasn’t safe, but we weren’t safe in Brighton either, were we?”

  He fell to his knees then, overcome with emotion, and the tears rolled freely down his face. He did not bother wiping them away. After all, what was the point? More would come, that much was sure. And so he knelt there, on the cold hard ground, and he cried.

  For a time, the big man said nothing, did nothing but stood there, regarding him. Matt, however, barely noticed, for his face was buried in his hands, the tears which he had struggled to hold back for the last several days, tears for all that he had lost, all that had been
taken from him, coming freely now. Then, suddenly, there was a hand on his shoulder. A rough hand, with callouses he could feel even through his heavy shirt and jacket, and though the touch was gentle he could feel the strength behind it. “Why did she do it?” Matt sobbed. “Why did she stay?”

  At first, he didn’t think the man would answer, thought that, like the several days previous, he would only let the silence speak for him. When he did finally speak, Cutter’s voice was rough and soft, as if it held back some great emotion. “Because I made her promise she would. Her and your father too, before he died.”

  Matt’s sobbing cut off at that, and he raised his head, staring at the big man. “What?”

  Cutter turned to fully face him now. “Your mother and father stayed in Brighton because I made them promise to when I gave you to them.”

  Matt’s head was suddenly full of confused, jumbled thoughts. “So what then? You paid them for that too?”

  The man’s eye twinged, a small, almost imperceptible gesture that might not have even been noticeable on another person but which, on him, stood out as a break in his unfeeling, uncaring façade, a crack in the armor he wore over himself against the world. “I never paid your mother and father.”

  “But…but you said you paid them to take me in, paid them so that they’d keep me.”

  The big man’s shoulders shifted in what might have been a shrug. “I lied.”

  Matt had thought himself drained of anger, had thought that all he’d had left in him was sadness and pain and regret. He’d been wrong. “So what?” he said, rising to his feet, his fists clenched at his sides. “You let me believe that my mother and father, that they just took me in because you paid them like some trader paid for a service, let me hate them?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why?” he yelled, not caring, for the moment, that they were in the middle of the Black Woods, not worried in that instant about drawing attention to himself.