Dolor and Shadow (6 page)

* * *

Rune gazed at the lifeless faces staring up at him, paying no mind as his father called for his sword and ran to the stables. Torunn had joined them and muffled her sobs into her skirts. Gently, she wrapped the bodies in cloth while Geirolf took up Caoilinn’s body.

“Take care of Swann,” Geirolf muttered to someone, but Rune heard nothing.

Bergen remained at his side, his shoulders shaking, his hands curled into white fists. His hair hung over his face, hiding the rage that shook him. The shock was wearing off. The wave of crying had begun. Someone took up Swann’s body and carried her into the keep. The sky was gray. Blood, Swann’s blood, stained the steps of the keep. The armband lay where it had fallen.

Forcing his body to move, Rune took up the band and trudged down the steps and started for the barracks.

The door creaked. The barracks were empty. Rune stopped in the doorway and gazed at the collection of swords and armaments. His eyes stopped on a single sword. Still clutching the armband, he withdrew it.

Hate boiled, rage rose. Rune screamed and swung the blade. His shoulders shook, and he swung again. Images of his sister’s body stripped and broken, bleeding and dead, swarmed him. Her body left to die in a pool of her own blood.

He swung the blade again and again.

Bergen had roared and taken up Swann’s body.

Rune had dug at the earth with his fists. He didn’t know how long they sat there screaming over her body.

Rune swung the blade. He roared, letting his voice shred his throat with the same agony that clawed his chest, and lunged, swinging again and then bringing the blade down into a table, down to the wooden floor.

He remembered the armband lying in the grass.

Rune swung the blade and it shattered in two. He dropped to his knees and stabbed at the floor with a half-blade while the tip clamored to the ground somewhere.

The dagger used to gut her had been left. Rune had run off, shouting to the murderer to come out while Bergen rocked sweet Swann and roared.

Rune dug at the floor over and over until the blade broke again. With his fists, he punched the floor and dug at the planks until his knuckles bled.

And then Mother.

His mind couldn’t process. Anguish clamped his chest and dug itself into his heart.

Rune shook his head and punched his brow. He pulled at his hair and dug at his scalp, desperate to find the Dokkalfar and kill him.

The barracks door struck the wall.

Rune remained, kneeling on the floor, yearning to find another sword and slash away at the world.

“Father’s gone,” he heard Bergen say. “I’m going after him.”

“Where?” Rune asked. Screaming had begun to pass over Gunir.

“To hunt Dokkalfar,” Bergen said.

Rune raised his face to his brother. Cold hate penetrated the silver blue of Bergen’s eyes.

“I’ll get the horses.”

* * *

The wind howled over the hundreds that lay dead on the forest road. Rune tightened his hold on the reins. He couldn’t see the end of the massacre through the steam.

Too stunned to speak, he stared at the Dokkalfar women, the children, the soldiers, and horses as Bergen spoke.

“Hundreds lay dead for me.

Silenced, they weep for thee,

Blood spilled where ne’er they’ll be.”

A raven cawed. The first of the flock were gathering.

“Silence the hundreds.”

The stench of the dead was growing. Within the hour, the field would be crawling with scavengers. This was how King Eyolf would find his kin. There was little time to act.

Rune turned his horse around. All taste for vengeance had left him.

“What are you doing?” Bergen asked and turned his horse to follow.

“There will be war,” Rune said. “The Dokkalfar king won’t dismiss this, nor should he.”

Bergen pulled back on his reins and looked to the dead.

Rune stopped his horse and turned. “Bergen,” he said. “We need to go back. We need to find Father before the Dokkalfar do.”

Bergen stared, not moving, the hate in his eye unyielding.

“Bergen,” Rune said.

It was another long moment before Bergen steered his horse back around to follow his brother.

CHAPTER 6

Kallan smelled the death before she saw the amassed bodies that lay, hewn in pools of their own blood and excrement. Steam rose from the bodies of children, dismembered and disemboweled beside the mothers who had thrown their broken bodies onto them. The steam now formed a thick fog that appeared to have rolled in. Interspersed with meat, drink, and gifts carried for Austramonath, three hundred lay dead.

In silence, Kallan stared from atop her horse. The ravens made feast where piles of pussywillows lay beside children. Alongside the corpses of horses and Alfar, wreaths of flowers and wild branches littered the ground.

Eyolf’s saddle creaked as he lowered himself from his mount. All eyes scanned the dead that spanned the caravan.

“Eyolf…” Daggon spoke, releasing the Dokkalfar from their spell. Numb to the horror that blinded her, Kallan slid from Astrid. Her legs jelled and buckled beneath her.

“F—Fathe—” Her voice cracked. A raven took flight and circled the air. “Were there no guards?”

Eyolf shook his head, unable to speak.

“There were,” Daggon said.

The raven circled and landed upon a small, bloodied mass: a boy. It pecked the corpse then pulled at the boy’s head until it had a mouthful of strands.

“Stop it,” Kallan muttered.

The raven pecked at a stub where an arm should have been.

“Stop it,” Kallan said.

The raven did not obey.

“Stop it!” Kallan shrieked and, scooping up a rock from the ground, she chucked it hard at the bird. “Stop it!” She took up another and, this time, she ran. “Stop it!”

The second rock fell short like the first, but, as she approached the body, the ravens took flight and left the corpse to Kallan.

“Stop!” Kallan screamed and threw her third rock into the air. It fell to the ground with a soft thump. Beside the boy, Kallan stood where the stench of death was stronger.

Behind her, Eyolf and Daggon led the king’s war-men into the dead. In silence, they walked, some bodies too mangled to identify. A few men, some guards lay on the ground, but mostly women and children made up the dead.

“Daggon,” Kallan heard the strength in her father’s voice falter. “Have one of your men take Kallan home.”

“My king.” His voice too had weakened. “Kallan.”

Kallan wasn’t sure how long she gazed into the steam that rolled in the wind. A shadow moved and a soft sob filled the massacre that was Austramonath.

She watched the malformed creature whimper as it hobbled over the dead. It sobbed as it stumbled and babbled intermittently with disconnected slurs and cries until a boy, bathed in blood, emerged from the fog, cradling the remains of a second much smaller boy.

“Mother said…” he muttered. “I will…He’ll be alright.” He stumbled and the corpse he grasped swayed, allowing Kallan to make out that the body was missing an arm and its tiny spine was cloven in two where entrails hung from its back.

“Mother said…” the boy muttered. “I can watch him. I can…I’m here…I did like you said, Mum. I’ll take care of him…”

His eyes focused as he emerged from his madness, and he noticed Kallan. “You can save him…you’re Seidkona. You’re…You can save him!”

Kallan stared, unable to speak, unable to offer words to the child whose mind had long since gone.

“Save him.” The child shoved the remains of his brother at Kallan. “You can! I know you can! You can…Mother told me…A Seidkona can save him!”

Kallan shook her head and forced the words to form. “I can’t.”

“You can!” The boy was standing close enough for Kallan to make out the blood that flowed from the child’s head and the one ruined eye now coated white. “You must!”

“Daggon,” Eyolf said.

“You aren’t even trying!” the boy screamed and Daggon reached to take him by the arm.

“Come along,” Daggon said.

The boy shrieked at Kallan. “You’ll kill him!”

Daggon grabbed the boy and firmly pulled him away from Kallan.

“You killed my brother!” The boy’s voice filled the stiff air.

“Daggon,” Kallan said and the captain froze. “I will take him.”

Daggon shook his head. “Kallan. You can’t help him.”

“I can’t bring his brother back.” Her knuckles were white as she dug her fists into her skirts and stumbled over the blood-soaked ground. “But I can help him.”

CHAPTER 7

Bergen sat on the steps of Gunir’s keep. Resting his arms on his knees, he supported his hunched back and shoulders. In one hand, he clutched the Sklavinian egg until his fingers were numb. In the other, he loosely held the neck of a bottle still full with mead.

Sklavinian artifacts are notorious for curses.

Rune’s words echoed back as Bergen stared at the stone courtyard bathed in moonlight and blood, Swann’s blood. He recalled Zabbai’s bronze body glistening in the sun of Râ-Kedet, naked and pure and perfect and chained. For two years, he had thought of little else.

Zabbai.

Swann’s death brought everything from Râ-Kedet flooding back.

The bottle slipped from his fingers and struck the stone with a thud. Red mead flowed down the steps of Gunir. Bergen didn’t move to stop it.

He could still smell the death on her.

And then their mother—

“Bergen.”

Bergen sat up. Like he, Rune looked beaten down and broken beneath the grief that had penetrated the city. Everyone felt the effect of Swann’s death. No one was immune to that loss. And Caoilinn’s death, at least that was one they could explain.

“Did you find him?” Bergen asked. The sound of his own voice felt foreign to him.

Rune shook his head as he watched a drop of mead cling to the lip of the bottle still resting on the steps. “Geirolf is looking with Torunn,” Rune said. “They haven’t seen him since…”

Rune dug his fingers into his eyes and Bergen stared at the city, too grief stricken to cry, too tired to sleep, too much death to live without hate.

Hate.

Bergen turned his thoughts to the fire that burned in his chest. That was something he knew and welcomed. He would need it where he was going.

Bergen shoved his hand through his short black hair and rubbed the back of his neck, then took up the bottle from the steps and shoved the egg into his pocket.

“And what of Mother?” Bergen asked, rising to his feet. “Has her body—” Bergen lost the words in his throat. There was no more room for grief, no more room to feel anything anymore, but hate.

Rune shook his head and wearily climbed each step to the great oak doors of the keep. “According to Geirolf, Father’s orders were to leave her.”

“We can’t just leave her,” Bergen said. The hate swelled again.

“What will you have me do?” Rune said, turning back to his brother. “Swann is dead…and Mother. Father is missing. After finding their kin slaughtered…the hundreds that lay dead…” Rune rubbed his hand over his face. “The Dokkalfar will want answers. They won’t stand for this, nor should they.”

Rune continued up the steps.

“Why should I concern myself with their misery when it was their kin who started this?” Rune gazed down upon his brother. “When it was they who took our Swann from us?” Bergen asked.

“Would you have war?” Rune said. “Would you see more dead? The Dokkalfar are strong.”

“We have numbers.” Bergen took a step closer.

“They have a witch, Brother. A Seidkona.”

Bergen’s face fell as he assessed the Dokkalfar’s strength against their numbers.

“One Seidkona doesn’t make an army,” Bergen said and turned away, but Rune’s hand flew to Bergen’s arm.

“They have weapons,” Rune said. “Forged from a steel the likes I have never seen before. If there is war…” Rune shook his head and left the thought unfinished. “We can’t win this.”

“There are others,” Bergen said. The rising darkness within him blanketed his face as his thoughts turned to the mountains.

“What others?” Rune asked.

“Rune. Bergen.”

Torunn stood on the steps of the keep. Her dainty shoulders sagged from the insurmountable grief they all bore these past few days. Her long black hair, always so neatly twisted and fastened to the back of her head, was disheveled, making her appear almost crazed.

“Your father,” she said. Her lip quivered. “He’s here.”