Only the Worthy (11 page)

Royce grabbed
hold of the ship’s rail as it approached the shore. A moment later it slammed
into the rocks and bobbed as the waves pulled it back. It crashed again and
again into the craggy boulders that acted as a shoreline for the Black Isle,
the boys helpless to steer it.

“Ropes!” the
soldiers cried. “Anchors!”

Royce
immediately jumped into action, Mark at his side, as they ran with the other
boys, grabbed the long, thick ropes coiled on deck, and threw them overboard.
The ropes were heavy, wet with sea foam, and coarse, cutting into his palms,
which were already calloused from hours of rowing. They stung at the touch.

As Royce tossed
the heavy ropes overboard, making sure the line was secure to the mast, his
shoulders ached, and he was relieved, at least, that the journey was done. This
isle may very well hold death, but at least it would be a death on dry land,
and not, like so many boys, on this cursed ship.

Royce heard a
commotion and looked out to see the fierce faces of the soldiers waiting to
greet them on the rocks below. They grabbed the ropes and secured them, pulling
the ship in, and as Royce looked at this welcoming party, he wondered if
arriving here was a relief. They were greeted by cold, hard gazes, summing up
the new crop of boys. They stood on a beach made of sharp, black rocks,
stretching the length of the isle. Fields of black soil lay behind it, no trees
in sight. The isle looked completely lifeless, no birds, no animals, no sound
other than the crashing of the waves and groaning of their ship.

These warriors were
clearly hardened men, overgrown, muscle-bound, heads shaved, faces covered in
scars. They wore a black, lightweight mesh armor, furs over their shoulders,
gold insignias branded on them. All wore long beards and sour faces, as if they
had never learned to smile. Clearly, this was a place of men.

Before them all
stood a man who appeared to be their leader, larger than the others, with broad
shoulders, extra furs, hard black eyes, and one of his ears mangled. He stood
there, hands on his hips while his men worked the ropes, and stared up at the
boys in disgust, as if the sea had washed up something foul.

“Welcome to
home,” Mark muttered sarcastically to Royce under his breath.

“MOVE!” bellowed
a voice behind them.

Royce, shoved
from behind, fell in line with the other boys, herded toward a wide plank
lowered from the ship. Royce watched as the plank fell through the air in an
arc thirty feet high, and landed on the rocks below with a bang. Beneath it
waves crashed, and sharks, he could see from here, swarmed in the waters. The
plank was narrow and crowded.

Royce, prodded
from behind, joined the others as they all hiked down the makeshift ramp. It
groaned beneath them with the weight of all the boys disembarking at once.
Royce understood too well why they were so eager to get off this ship. Yet at
the same time, he wondered what the rush was: did they not realize a different
death awaited them on this isle?

They stampeded
down the plank like an army of elephants, and there soon arose cursing as the
boys shoved and elbowed each other. Royce heard one boy cry out and glanced
back to see Rubin, the bully who had tried to take his necklace, who had tormented
those down below, with his bald head, double chin, narrow brown eyes, and angry
jaw, turn and put a shoulder into one boy. The boy shrieked as he fell from the
plank, still a good thirty feet up, and into the waters.

Within seconds
he was swarmed by the school of sharks, tearing him to pieces as he shrieked.
Finally he was dragged under, the waters turning red.

Royce, sickened,
looked away. Death, it seemed, awaited them at every turn.

Royce glared
back at Rubin, filled with anger and disgust, and Rubin returned the glare.

“What are you
looking at?” Rubin barked.

Royce silently
vowed to take vengeance for that boy. Rubin’s time would come.

They kept moving
and Royce continued quickly down the plank, Mark beside him, all the boys
pressing in close, not wanting to meet the same fate. Soon Royce stepped foot
on a boulder, and he breathed a sigh of relief to feel dry land beneath his
feet. He took a few more steps and found himself on a black beach of rocks.

“Line up!” cried
the guards.

They all lined
up beside each other, and Royce looked over to see that there were only one
hundred survivors left. The numbers stunned him. When they had departed there
had been several hundred aboard. Had they lost that many to the sea?

Lined up side by
side, they all faced the warrior Royce could only assume to be their new
commander, and as Royce looked up into his hardened face, his cold black eyes
assessing them as he walked up and down the line, he shivered. This man was
formidable, a man to be respected. Towering over all the others, with dark
skin, a wide jaw, a bald head, and a scar running from chin to ear, he looked
to be afraid of nothing. He was like a walking mountain.

He walked slowly
up and down the line, surveying them, and Royce could feel his heart pounding
in the silence, the air thick with tension. Without rhyme or reason the
commander suddenly walked up to a boy and punched him with an uppercut to his
mouth.

The boy fell
flat on his back, moaning in pain. He then sat up.

“What did I do?”
the boy asked.

The commander
grinned.

“You exist,” he
replied, his voice as deep and hard as his appearance. “And next time, you will
address me as Commander Voyt.”

Commander Voyt
stepped over the boy’s head, smiling an evil grin as he continued surveying the
others.

“Welcome to the Black
Isle,” Voyt boomed, his voice ominous and anything but welcoming. “Home for
centuries to the best fighters our kingdom has to offer. I am your master. Your
owner. You will look up to me as if I am God. Because I
am
God. If I
decide you die, you die. If I decide you live, well, you live for now. Until
you die at some other time. Do you treasure life that much that you wish to
live longer—only to die later?”

It was a curious
question, and as he continued to pace the ranks, Royce wasn’t certain he was
seeking an answer. He seemed to look into each boy’s soul as he passed them.

“That is the
central question here, one you will learn to ask yourself: how many times will
you pray to die? To die the death of training? Training to die in glory.”

He paced, hands
behind his back, and as he looked out at the sea, he looked as if he were
talking more to himself, as if he had seen endless crops of boys arrive and
die.

“When you have
reached the end of your training—
if
you do—” he continued, “you’ll be
sent to the Pits. There you will learn what true death means. You’ll find
yourself pitted against savages from every corner of the world. Men who are as
likely to bite off your faces as clasp your hand. They show no mercy. They seek
no mercy. And that is our motto here on the Black Isle:
Show No Mercy. Seek
No Mercy
. It is one you will learn too well. For that is the way of steel.”

He took a deep
breath as he continued pacing.

“The Black Isle,
my
isle, turns boys into men. It takes criminals and killers and turns
them into warriors; it takes the living and turns them into a walking death.
You will be haunted here, and the nightmares will plague you the rest of your
life. If you are worthless, as most of you are, you will die. Those of you who
are not ready to become men, will die. Those of you who are weak, those of you
who are not killers, will die. This is the isle where weakness dies. Where the
strong come to flourish.”

He stopped in
the center, leaned back, and gave a broad smile.

“Welcome, my
friends, my servants, my less than nothing scum, to the Black Isle.”

Voyt turned
abruptly and began to march for the mainland, his soldiers falling in behind
him. There came a commotion and as Royce felt himself shoved, he fell in line
with the others as they all began to follow.

A horn was
sounded from behind Royce, and he turned to see the ship’s plank rise, the
ropes pulled in, the ship beginning to depart. He felt a pit in his stomach as
it began to sail away, out to sea, farther and farther from shore.

Royce turned
back and faced the death before him, the black, barren isle, and he sensed that
he would never reach home again.

Genevieve stood
beside the window in the torch-lit chamber and peered down at the castle’s
courtyard below, no longer trying to stop the tears from running down her
cheeks. The rustling continued behind her, and she felt a deepening dread as
she knew it was Altfor, slowly getting undressed, removing his wedding finery,
one piece at a time. The time had come for them to consummate their marriage.

Genevieve had
been led to this chamber earlier in the night, and as she’d walked in she’d
been struck by the enormous four-poster bed dominating the room, draped in
silks and furs the likes of which she had never dreamed. Luxurious tapestries
hung from the walls, silk rugs adorned the stone, and in the corner, a
fireplace burned.

None of it held
any sway for Genevieve. On the contrary, it felt like a tomb. Filled with
dread, she looked up at the stars in the sky and she wished, she prayed with
all her heart and soul, that she were anywhere else. She looked out and
searched the horizon and wondered about Royce. He was somewhere out there,
alive or dead, she did not know. She prayed he would sail back to her, and
escape with her this time for good. What she wouldn’t give to have her simple
life back again.

Genevieve heard Altfor
take a step toward her and she snapped out of it, remembering instead the awful
image of the day’s wedding ceremony. She felt a knot in her stomach at the
thought. It had been a formal, royal affair, Genevieve standing there, present
in person but not in her soul. She stood numb throughout the entire event, even
as Altfor had smiled and kissed her. He had taken her hand and turned and faced
the crowd, and the nobles had all nodded back approvingly as the newlyweds
walked back down the aisle.

Genevieve closed
her eyes and shook her head, trying to wipe it all from her mind. It was the
ultimate betrayal to Royce, to the one man she loved in the world. How, she
wondered, had she allowed it to come to this?

Her new
sister-in-law’s words rang in her head.

Become the worm
from within. Give them time. Allow them to think you love them. Allow their
guard to lower. And then, when they are comfortable, strike.

Moira had a
point, of course. The nobles had not been attacked from the outside for
centuries. But a foe from the inside, that could topple them. Her marriage, she
knew, was the best way to ultimately avenge her people—and free Royce.

She knew it
would require patience and cunning, and Genevieve was not good at playing
games. She was who she was, and had a hard time pretending to be anyone else.

“My love?”

Genevieve
flinched at the sudden voice, shattering the silence, like a knife in her back.
She heard Altfor approach a few feet behind, and her heart pounded as she felt
his hands on her shoulders. They were gentle hands, yet they felt like icicles
on her body.

She did not move
to turn, though, and he let out a long sigh.

“I am not like
the other lords here, who would take you forcefully,” he said softly in her
ear. “I will only take you willingly. When you are ready. When you ask me to.”

Genevieve was
startled by his words. They were words she had never expected a noble to utter.

She turned to
face him, and she could see that his face was earnest. It held kindness and
compassion, which also surprised her. It was a face starkly unlike his cruel
brother’s.

“I am not at all
like my brother,” he continued, surprising her, as if reading her mind. “We
share the same parents, but that is all. My brother was an immature, foolhardy
man. A violent and willful man. I did not approve of him snatching women from
the fields. It is not something I myself have ever done. I loved him in his
way—we are brothers after all. But I am not him.”

Genevieve took a
deep breath, summing him up.

“Yet you have
taken me in marriage and away from my people,” Genevieve replied coldly. “In a
way, that is worse.”

“I have taken
you not as a plaything, but to marry,” he replied. “There is a difference.”

She shook her
head.

“You are wrong,”
she replied. “You are the same as your brother. You take me with a ceremony and
a smile; he did so with aggression. Either way, I do not wish to be taken.”

He stared back,
his face dropping, and she could see her words had reached him.

“You are wrong,”
he replied.

She blinked
back.

“So then I am
free to leave?” she asked.

“No,” he
replied, his voice hard. “You are not free to leave. You are mine now. You
belong to me, to this family. You will bear me sons. Perhaps daughters, too.
But I won’t force you. I will give you time. You will learn to love me.”

Genevieve felt a
sense of disgust welling within her, along with a stubborn determination to
never love him. She frowned, feeling her anger, her hopelessness, course
through her. She realized even in her anger how different Altfor was than the
other nobles and perhaps it was his nobility, his lack of cruelty, that
inflamed her. It would have been easier if he were violent and cruel like the
others.

“I shall
never
learn to love you,” she insisted. “My heart lies with another. And as long as I
am alive, until I die with my last breath, I shall always love him. You may
have me; yet you have but a shell of me. He has my entire heart, and he shall
have it forever.”

She expected Altfor
to be angry; she
wanted
him to be angry.

Yet to her great
surprise and disappointment, he merely smiled back and caressed her cheek with
the back of his gentle hand.

“I will leave
you now,” he replied. “We will sleep in separate chambers. But one day you
shall seek me out.” He smiled, caressing her cheek. “Love,” he concluded, “you
will find, can have many different meanings.”