Winter's King

by Bryce O'Connor

  When he looked up upon the Saragrias Ranges in all their colossal glory, Raz forgot any forged concept he’d ever had of his own worth in the world.

  He had been aware of their presence since before they’d entered the Woods, of course. Though Talo and Carro had never been able to make the ranges out, Raz’s sharp eyes had trailed their outline often for the final hours before reaching the tree line. He’d wondered—offhandedly, at the time—what manner of creation could be so large as to tower imperiously over the earth. It had been a question born of impressed curiosity.

  Now, it was a question reincarnated from shocking wonder that oddly toed the line of something very much like fear.

  The mountains were prodigious crafts of some god or another. That was the only way Raz could categorize them so that the Saragrias became fathomable. He didn’t know what or whose gods, but he didn’t really care one way or the other. They rose—even more teeth-like now that he could see them up close—to pierce the very sky. The lowest peaks among them he could just make out through the snow, scraping at the storm clouds as a far-off wind blew powdered white streams from their cliffs and into the air in constant, tumbling currents. Their sides, pockmarked with ledges and pockets of huddled pines, swooped upward and overhead, grey against the contrast of dark stone and snow. High, high above, white capped the very top of each, like a series of wintery crowns that gave the ranges nothing short of the bearing of kingly titans suspended over an endless empire.

  But that was only the smallest of them. The largest, thrusting up from the land here and there between the bands of the mountains that seemed to extend ever northward, did not toy with the sky as their shorter cousins did. Rather, those colossi, behemoths of stone and earth, were swallowed by the heavens, their great peaks sometimes vanishing into the clouds long before Raz could make out so much as a hint of capping snow. Lacking their white crowns, Raz couldn’t help but wonder if their heights ascended into a world beyond the one he knew so well. Did they thrust all the way up into the night sky, perhaps? Did they rise to stand as proud sentries for the Moon’s nightly traverse?

  For the first time in what would become a great many times, Raz pondered if climbing to the top of the greatest of those peaks might allow him a glimpse of the souls that had long left him for the brightness of Her Stars…

  “Well… Unfortunate, but I guess it can’t be helped.”

  Raz blinked, tearing his eyes from the mountains to look around at Carro. The man was gazing up at the line of the Saragrias as well, but with such an utter lack of awe that shocked Raz so deeply, it almost made him sad.

  “W-What’s that?” he asked faintly, struggling to pull his mind back from the tops of the Saragrias and down to the real world. Carro looked around at him, brows furrowed in concern.

  “You alright, boy?”

  Raz nodded, getting a grip on himself. “What’s unfortunate?” he asked again, extinguishing his torch in the snow so he could put a hand out to pat Gale’s neck as the horse limped closer to him.

  In truth he did it more to support himself than anything, feeling slightly dizzy standing there in the shadow of the mountains.

  Carro watched him a moment longer, the look not leaving his face. Eventually, though, he answered. “We’re too far east. We’ll need to double back. Not for long, though. I know this place. We’re within the harvest radius, so we’re not far.”

  “The what?” Raz asked.

  “The harvest radius,” Carro repeated, turning around already and making back towards the trees. “Each summer, the residents of the Citadel descend every few days to forage and hunt for food. In a couple of months the Woods supply most of our needs for the freeze, though game gets scarce quickly. The harvest radius is just the space of several miles about the base of the pass where this happens.”

  “Clever,” Raz responded, giving the mountains one last long look before grabbing the doused torch from the snow again and following the Priest back into the relative cover of the trees. He didn’t know if he felt safer, hidden beneath the branches, or saddened as they moved away from the ranges. “I hadn’t considered that. I suppose it can’t be easy to grow food through such a winter.”

  “We make do with hardier varieties,” Carro told him as the light began to fade overhead. “The kitchens plant potatoes and some other vegetables indoors. Enough to last the freeze. Game is dressed and frozen in outer rooms and sheds, ones that aren’t heated. It’s hard, some years, but we make it through without anyone starving.”

  “Indoors?” Raz asked, equal parts perplexed and intrigued at the multitude of particulars Carro had just revealed. “You can farm without the Sun? And unheated? What do you mean? Come to think of it, how do you live up there without every one of you freezing your balls off through the winter?”

  Carro chuckled. “With a lot of effort and even more help from the gifts Laor has granted us. Planting is simple enough. We can manage the soil and water on our own, but for light we have to rely on the magics. Heat, though, is more complicated…”

  For the next half hour or so Raz listened in rapt attention as Carro began to tell him of all the marvels of Cyrugi’ Di that Talo had never seen to reveal. He described the great system of copper piping that channeled steam and hot air through the walls and floor of the Citadel throughout the year, fed by massive furnaces in the bowels of the temple. He talked of the wonders of the library, making it out to be a cavernous expanse of endless knowledge, all bathed in the painted history of the faith across its grand domed ceiling. He told Raz about the classrooms, the practice chambers, the dormitories, and the dining hall where men and women of all ranks and ages ate and conversed together when time allowed. He even spoke of Priest-Mentors, of the ceremonies of consecration, of graduating from the position of acolyte and earning one’s staff, as well as the rare ritual of Breaking—the process in which a member of the faith was stripped of their powers and cast out, leaving them marked with a great scar across their face.

  This last bit of information had tugged at Raz’s memory, though he didn’t quite know why.

  “Why would a Priest be Broken?” he asked—his first question since Carro had started on about the Citadel and the faith. “Is it a sacrifice? Or—?”

  “No sacrifice,” Carro answered him, scowling a little at the suggestion. “Laor requires no such barbaric offerings, like those demanded by the Stone Gods. No… Breaking of Priests, Priestesses, or even acolytes only occurs under one circumstance: the throwing aside of vows, the violation of our most cardinal principal.”

  Raz understood at once.

  “Killers,” he said tonelessly.

  “Killers,” Carro repeated in agreement. “Or those of the faith who—through action or inaction—knowingly partake in the deliberate death of another…”

  He trailed off, and Raz noticed that the man had suddenly paled.

  “What is it?” he asked, concerned.

  “Nothing,” Carro said quickly, seeming to shake off some overbearing thought. “Nothing worth dwelling on, at the very least.” He licked his lips. “As I was saying, Breaking is our faith’s most extreme form of punishment. I’ve only witnessed it once, performed on a girl only a few years older than Syrah. Her powers were ripped from her, she was relieved of her acolyte’s robes, and then carted to Ystréd within a week. There she was left with the gold for food and lodging for a single night.”

  “Harsh,” Raz said, impressed by the unmerciful nature of the act. “I wouldn’t have expected it from your kind.”

  “The Laorin have no clemency for betrayers of the faith,” Carro said, his voice hard as they pushed through a particularly heavy thicket of underbrush. “Least of all heartless, cruel creatures like Lazura. Do you know what she did? She—mmmph!”

  Raz practically lifted Carro off his feet, the hand that had been holding the torch wrapped firmly about the Priest’s mouth, the torch itself falling with a hiss against the icy ground. As the man struggled in his arms, his shouts of surprise and pai
n as his broken arm was pressed against his body muffled by the leather and steel of Raz’s gauntlet, Raz stomped out the flames with the pads of one fur boot and dragged Carro back into the bushes. He ran into Gale’s chest as he backed up, the stallion fortunately having not pressed through behind them yet, and the animal nickered loudly in surprise.

  “Shhhh,” Raz hissed to both of them, eyes wide as he willed them to adjust quickly to the limited light of the Woods.

  At once Carro stopped struggling, recognizing the tension in Raz’s bearing. Raz let him go, and the Priest blinked the pained watering of his eyes away as they crouched in the dark in front of the horse.

  “What is it?” he asked in a shrill whisper, sounding suddenly terrified. “Another bear? Laor have mercy, not another b—”

  Raz stopped him again, this time with a single finger raised to his lips. He was listening once more. This time, though, it wasn’t an animal he was worried about.

  Raz had discerned two very distinct things as they’d shoved their way through the hedge they now crouched behind. The first: they’d found the path. It trailed, a narrow band of pale dirt through the cool lushness of the Woods, off right and left, north and south respectively. Carro had been correct in the end, they had been close, and clearly hadn’t overshot the path by much, as they’d only been walking west again for about twenty minutes.

  The second thing, though, had been the distinct and unmistakable sound of men’s voices.

  Whether it was too many days with only the Priests—now Priest, Raz thought sadly—for company, or the fact that Talo had put him on edge when they’d first crossed the Arocklen’s borders, it hadn’t taken more than an instant for Raz to realize that the voices had not been speaking in the Common Tongue. Rather, the sharp, garbled words he’d made out had been in a guttural, rough language, one he did not recognize. Couple that with the grind and clink of shifting leather and metal plating, and Raz deduced quickly who the voices had belonged to.

  “I think your mountain men are here.”

  He said the words very quietly, as though the softness of them would somehow diminish Carro’s reaction. It did no such thing, of course, and the Priest’s sudden intake of breath sounded howlingly loud to Raz’s sharp ears.

  “Shhh,” he said again, more urgently. “Quiet. They’re coming.”

  And indeed they were. Raz rather thought it was Gale, huffing and stomping behind them, who had gotten them caught. He and Carro’s voices might have been lost to the wind and creak of trees, but the horse’s nicker would have been distinct. Even as he thought this, the barest hint of firelight dug its way through the darkness to their right, north along the trail. The voices had stopped, but the sound of feet and the grind of armor were more and more distinct.

  Raz thought fast. There was no time to drill Carro on what could be expected if they were caught, or what the best course of action was to ensure that that didn’t happen. He had to act, and he had to act now.

  His grip tightened around Ahna’s haft as he made his decision.

  “Carro, I’m going to leave you.”

  Beside him, the Priest’s eyes grew even wider. He opened his mouth to protest, but Raz cut him off.

  “You need to trust me,” he said quickly, already getting up. “I’ll be back. We don’t know how many there are and we don’t know what they’ll do if they find us, but neither do we have the time to debate it. I’ll be right back.”

  He was in the process of turning north, intent on dashing through the flickering shadows of the trees as the torchlight grew ever nearer from the same direction, when Carro grabbed the loose furs of his leg. He whirled, about to hiss in fury at the man, but stopped.

  Carro was not looking at him in fear, now. No, that wasn’t true. He was looking at Raz in fear, but it was a different kind of fear. There was a strength in the scared complexion of this face, a rigidity in his composure. Raz had seen it before, this impressive—almost irritating—countenance, this bravery in the face of terror.

  He had seen it in the bearing of Syrah Brahnt, so many years ago, as she had vied for the life of a dying slaver.

  “Don’t kill them,” Carro said, the quiet demand somewhere between an order and a plea. “Please, Raz. Don’t kill them. I don’t want—I can’t let another… another be…”

  He trailed off. Raz hesitated. He only half understood what Carro was talking about, for one thing, and the last time he had bowed to such a request the results had been hellish.

  But, in the end, he nodded. Bending down he eased Ahna gently to the ground just as the light flared in truth around the trees, sneaking through the thicket that hid them both in a mosaic of brightness.

  Then Raz bolted right, running through the dark.

  He moved fast, but not far, whispering between the warped trunks like some demon of the night. He hadn’t gone more than a dozen yards before he caught a glimpse of the men through the forest, running along the trail in the other direction. He took two more bounding strides, then spun and slipped left to the edge of the path, looking south.

  They were only two. The pair wore worn leather armor supplemented with iron plating in various forms and places, and from behind Raz was momentarily taken by how they could have almost been Carro and Talo. They were large, heavily muscled men, both with dirty wild hair—one blond and the other light brown—and as they looked around, searching for the source of whatever sound had alerted them, Raz saw decorative scars tracing lines through thick beards and up along their cheeks. Both carried torches aloft, their other hands hefting heavy axes at the ready.

  As he darted across the path Raz hoped, for a moment, that the men would run right past the thicket behind which Carro crouched and Gale stood. He kept an eye on them as he moved, quiet as a shadow, back in their direction, now on the opposite side of the trail. It seemed luck wasn’t about to favor him, though, and as one of the men shouted, practically skidding to a halt in front of the brush, Raz realized with an angry rush that while he and Carro had been well enough hidden, the stallion probably towered in perfectly plain view.

  By that point, though, he was even with them, and just when the two mountain men whirled in the horse’s direction, Raz’s great outline flickered against the canopy as he leapt out from the darkness behind them with a snarl like a wild animal.

  It was a short, brutal fight. One man caught a mailed fist in the side of the head as he turned towards this new sound, the other yelling in surprise when Raz’s tail swept his thick legs out from under him. The first went down at once, body going limp as wet paper, ax and torch tumbling from useless fingers. The second hit the ground with a muffled thud and the crunch of leather and iron, but didn’t get so much as a chance to start heaving himself back up before Raz was over him. He had only the briefest moment to look up, blue eyes wide as a clawed foot rose up before his eyes.

  “Dahgün,” he breathed in quiet shock, staring up into Raz’s face, illuminated beneath his hood by the two torches lying flickering beside the trail.

  Then Raz’s foot came down, slamming the man’s head into the ground behind it.

  There was a moment of silence as the forest around them settled, the Woods taking as much notice of the scuffle as it might have the falling of a single flake of snow.

  Then Carro came tumbling out of the brush.

  “Dammit, Raz!” he grumbled, hurrying over the man whose head Raz had just pounded into the earth.

  “They’re fine,” Raz said in exasperation. “I pulled my punches. They’ll wake up in a bit, though with a hell of a headache to remember me by.”

  “This one is bleeding, though!” Carro exclaimed, shuffling over to the first man, on his side on the path.

  “Huh, so he is,” Raz said, taking a cursory peek at the mountain man’s face over the Priest’s shoulder. The pointed steel edge of the gauntlet’s knuckles had ripped open the skin beneath his left eye, and it was bleeding profusely. Raz was about to voice some quip about “just adding to the scars,” when Carro s
tarted twisting his right hand over the man’s face. He watched the Priest work his magic again, fascinated by the golden, dancing lines of the healing spell. He stood witness, awed into silence, as the cut sealed itself before his very eyes, the loose fold of broken skin piecing itself back together again as though by—well, as though by magic.

  “Amazing,” he heard himself mutter.

  Carro finished his work, the gold light fading abruptly, and reached up to wipe sweat from his brow.

  “You Priests really go the distance,” Raz muttered, crossing his arms and shoving the man Carro had just tended to over on his back with a foot. “Waste of your gift, if you ask me.”

  Carro sighed. “Why am I not in the least bit surprised to hear you say that?”

  Then he frowned down at the mountain man, taking in the scars of his face and what—Raz realized only now that he was closer—appeared to be a thick, vertical piercing of some ashen bone through the man’s nose.

  “Are they mountain men?” Raz asked tentatively. He had assumed—and was fairly sure he was correct—but it didn’t hurt to ask.

  Carro nodded. “Kregoan, the both of them,” he said, glancing at the other unconscious form behind them as well. “One of the western tribes, of the Vietalis.”

  “Then they’re your Kayle’s men,” Raz said, frowning. “Unless there’s another reason members of the western ranges would be wandering the Arocklen in the middle of the freeze…?”