Brotherhood Saga 03: Death

by Kody Boye

  “He’ll settle down eventually,” Ketrak said. “That’s the thing with children. They’ll go on and on for the longest time. Then they’re asleep before you know it.”

  “Hopefully.”

  Though Carmen raised her hands to hide her chuckle, Nova caught sight and narrowed his eyes at her. She merely winked in response. “I think I’m going to go into town and get some bread,” she said, hopping off the couch and heading for the door. “And before you ask, no—I’m not leaving because of the baby. We just haven’t had bread for a while and I have a good feeling about the hunters today.”

  “I hope so,” Nova said. “I’m getting tired of eating broth and vegetables.”

  With a smile, Carmen donned her cloak and gestured for Honor, who followed without hesitation.

  She patrolled the snow-covered booths along the side of the street. Her basket in hand, her hood over her head, she scoured the shelves upon which a number of delicacies both edible and not sat and tried to secure within her possession the bread she so desperately wanted.

  The bakery had to have made bread today, she thought.

  How couldn’t they? This was the capital. The grain and wheat storages were immense, dwarfed only by the outpost towers they lay beneath, and surely were filled with the fruits of last spring’s labor. Where else would it have gone?

  If not in the stomachs of the hungry, she mused.

  Sighing, Carmen paused to consider her options and looked down at the dog. Honor—who’d been mostly nonchalant about the entire escapade—cocked his head and offered a slight harrumph.

  “Can’t find the bread,” she said. “Someone must have ate it all.”

  The dog’s whimpers matched her feelings perfectly.

  “They might have some at a kitchens,” a voice said.

  Carmen lifted her head. A teenage boy—whom, until that moment, she hadn’t noticed—stepped up from behind one of the booths and offered a slight frown. “The kitchens?” she asked. “You mean in the castle?”

  “Yessum.”

  “Why would it be there? I thought there was a bakery outside the royal walls?”

  “There is, ma’am, but the local farmers have no storage. They’ve used it all to feed their friends and family.”

  “So the storage is low?”

  The boy nodded. “There is bread,” he said. “I know there is, because I saw an official walk by with a loaf. I guess it’s all a matter of whether or not you can get in and get some.”

  Nodding, Carmen scratched Honor’s head and turned to look up the street—where, she knew, the gates to the castle would still likely be open, given the situation the city was in. “Thank you, sir. I appreciate your help.”

  The boy merely nodded before shrinking back to his work.

  With that, Carmen turned and started up the road.

  Though she was given rather incredulous looks by the guards posted along the gate—both, she imagined, for her size and the dog beside her—she was allowed entrance into the royal grounds and began her trek toward the castle. She’d expected people to be lined up to be getting food. Instead, she walked the path alone, the hero who in her darkest hour quested for those more important.

  It’s nothing to be worried about, she thought. You just had a different idea. That’s all.

  Who was she to say that she had been wrong in envisioning such a thing? For years beneath the Hornblaris Mountains she had been told that humans were fodder—worms only useful for taming and cultivating the environment. They, the Dwarves said, would cut down the forests, would slay the monsters, would establish ground on which could be settled, then fertilize it for their own before their eventual fall, leaving it ripe for the taking for the true first kind of Minonivna. Dwarvenkind’s outlook on humanity was quite grim, so for her to have such progressive thinking should’ve been impossible. Now, though, it seemed foolish—if not because of an overzealous expectation of her own, but for the idea that the Dwarves could have been right.

  Sighing, Carmen straightened her posture and looked up as she approached the castle’s front gates.

  “Stop,” one of the guards said, though Carmen did so on instinct the moment he shifted his head. “What business do you have within the castle?”

  “I was told there was bread,” Carmen said. “Is there?”

  The guards looked between one another before returning their attention to her. “There is,” he said, “but it’s being handed out in proportion to family size.”

  “There’s three.”

  “You?”

  “Me?” she asked. “I—“

  “Is it for your family?”

  “Nuh… no,” Carmen said. “It’s for the people who are staying with me. A young couple who just had a baby and her father.”

  “There are some whose families are in greater need,” one of the guards replied.

  “Greater need? You mean one of the royal families?” The words left her mouth faster than she could think them. Harsh, barbed, filled with venom, they struck even her as they planted their fangs into the cold reality of the world. “One of the families who can afford to have more than one child?”

  “Ma’am, please don’t—“

  “I’m not arguing with you,” Carmen said. “I’m merely saying. It’s a woman and her child. Her husband is a veteran. He went to war. In Dwaydor. To stand between you and them. I was there with him.”

  “That doesn’t make a difference.”

  “What were you doing? Standing here, in front of a gate behind two stone walls? Is this really what this country thinks of their warriors? In the Dwarven world, we give our veterans benefits based on war accomplishments, not on whose dick we came from.”

  The men stiffened. “Ma’am,” one said. “You need to leave. Now.”

  “Or what? You’ll throw me in jail? At least there I’d get fed.”

  “We won’t give you another warning.”

  While her heart and mouth told her to press forward, her head told her that getting thrown in jail for insubordination would do her no good.

  Turning, she started down the road.

  She heard no whispers from behind.

  “I couldn’t get any bread.”

  After relaying the story to Nova—whom, upon her arrival, had stepped forward—Carmen sighed and shifted before the stove. Her humility in the matter was only further stricken by the expression on Nova’s face—which, while not disappointed, appeared concerned.

  “It’s ok,” the red-haired man said. “You tried. That’s all that matters.”

  “I was told the food was given out based on how big the family was,” she replied. “Based on how many times a member of the royal family thought he needed another heir.”

  “That’s the way the country works. That’s the way it’s always been.”

  “Well, it’s fucking dumb if you ask me.”

  Nova shrugged. Carmen shook her head, cast her cloak from her shoulders, then hung it up before the fire to dry. She took note of the silence and craned her head to look out the other side of the kitchen. “Where’s Katarina?” she asked.

  “Sleeping with the baby,” Nova replied. “Her father’s down for the afternoon in his own room.”

  “Ok.”

  “Why don’t you go up to your room, Carmen?”

  “That room is not my room,” she replied. “That’s another room upstairs.”

  “Yes, it is, but we want you to stay in it.”

  “I feel more comfortable down here.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, for one, I can sleep in front of the fire,” she said. “And two, I’m down here if anyone needs anything.”

  “You’re just up the stairs if we need you,” Nova laughed. “You need some time to yourself. You’ve been going nonstop since we left Arbriter.”

  “It’s keeping me busy.”

  “Yeah, but for how long?”

  Carmen frowned. Though she wanted to reply, the usual retort was not at the tip of her tongue.


  He could be right, she thought. I could be overworking myself.

  A glance into the living room painted a picture of the last few weeks—of a deerskin arranged before the fire for her to sleep atop or beneath.

  “Ok,” she said, nodding, the tone in her voice drastically lower than it had been before. “I’ll go.”

  “I’ll make dinner,” Nova nodded, following her as she rounded the corner to ascend the stairs. “Thank you for all you’ve done, Carmen. You don’t know how much it means to me.”

  Carmen nodded.

  The only sound she heard on the way up was the stairs creaking below her feet.

  *

  The tempest was great. Like a gargantuan devil that spun through the hills and took anything in its path upon a land that he had once called home, it warped around the house to the point where he seemed to be able to feel its power. Raw, overwhelming, like the force of a voice projected from the foot of a mountain to reach its highest peak—it struck him not with its direct impact, but its intended consequence, which rattled his body to the point where he could hardly keep from shivering.

  It’s fine, he thought. We’re safe.

  He’d closed the door to try and keep the warmth in—mostly for the baby, but also for his wife—but so far it’d done little to help. Already his son was wrapped within his father’s coat, the one his grandfather had bestowed upon him so many long years ago. Framed within the hood’s halo, beneath the red fur, he appeared something like an angel, sleeping there all content, yet regardless he could not shake the feeling that he could be doing something more.

  What, though?

  Gathering firewood from the nearby forest, learning to shoot to hunt with the men, learning the tricks of trade of leather and skin-working in order to make better necessities for themselves—it seemed no matter what he thought there was no purpose. The firewood was done, arranged neatly within the box by the place, and with no game there was no reason to shoot, let alone try and learn to properly tan a hide. Even the offers of work as a hired sword for the caravans running within the Golden Crown were incomprehensible. He couldn’t abandon his family—not now, not in this climate, and especially not with a newborn baby.

  It seems like there’s nothing I can do.

  Sighing, he reached up to stroke the beard covering his face and cast a glance at his shoulder at his wife, whose body had in his absence drawn to the makeshift cradle Carmen had built from a few planks of wood.

  Katarina’s hand—so feebly drawn in sleep—seemed to extent toward the one possibility that made this suffering worthwhile.

  Him.

  At this, the baby began to stir. His short whimpers, soft yet easily discernible, cut through the night like a jagged key loosened from its piano and entered his ears with an urgency he felt only a caretaker could dictate. His heart fluttered, his lip quivered, and his eyes instantly gravitated toward the child whom no more than a few weeks ago had just been born.

  Slowly, as to not disturb Katarina from sleep she did not often have, Nova crossed the room and crouched down beside the cradle. “Hey,” he whispered. “Buddy. It’s ok. I’m here.”

  Konnan Eternity opened his eyes to regard his father with the same golden orbs his father had been born with. Face scrunched in discomfort, fists writhing at his side, he opened his mouth as though to let out a wail, then stopped as Nova took him into his arms.

  “There,” he whispered, cradling the infant close to his chest. “It’s all right.”

  A God could not have tested the fragility of it all. A baby, in a man’s arms; a father, holding his infant son; a situation, so grim it appeared nothing could be done—as outside the storm blew on, raining havoc upon the land that was once called golden, and as within her bed a mother slept, there appeared to dangle within the air an hourglass whose spool of sand was endless. Come, it would have said. Test thy might against the eternal winds. And tested he would be, Nova knew, because as the room filled with sand—swallowing first the boards, then the blankets, then his family and then he himself—he would be made to wonder whether he could do anything to help them, for what man is able to swim a thousand seas, cross ten-thousand leagues, wade through the waters infested by such hellacious fish or even dig himself from beneath the sands of time without first succumbing to defeat? There were no matter of great feats within the world, to be sure—he himself had witnessed many—but in knowing that his position in the world had come full circle now that this child had been born, he couldn’t help but wonder if he could do it.

  A few weeks, he thought, and I’m already beginning to falter.

  The baby’s exclamations in his arms proved happiness—or, at the least, contentment. In that regard, Nova felt he could say he had done a good job, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t help but feel he was failing.

  Bohren, he thought. Home.

  The sweeping hills, the majestic plains beneath, the farmlands lush and rich with food and the people kind and pure: from the tops of the highest northern hills one could look out and see the ocean—could smell the salt and bathe in its splendor—and on winter days the world would resemble a great and magical paradise, for atop this place they were kings in their own domain and could never be conquered.

  “Yet we were,” Nova whispered.

  Never would his son see those great rolling lands where he had grown up, play within the streets bathed in dappled sunlight on a fine summer’s day, grace the fields where through their crevices flowers grew, the virgin places of the world that knew not yet of its dangers. That place—it’d been magical. Now his son would never see it.

  Someday, he thought.

  “Maybe,” he whispered.

  The baby set his head against Nova’s chest.

  Nova sighed.

  Home was far away, across many leagues and in a completely different land. But one thing was for sure—they were safe. That was all he could ask for.

  *

  “Where’ve you been?” Parfour asked, pouring Odin and Virgin a glass of tea. “It’s been… what? Almost a year now?”

  “When did the war end?” Odin asked, accepting the glass and tipping it to his lips.

  “About six months ago… which would’ve been three after you left. Why?”

  “What’re you still doing here in Dwaydor then?”

  “The people here need help in these harsh times,” Parfour sighed, reaching up to brush his lengthening hair away from his face. Odin couldn’t help but stare at his milky left eye and managed a smile when the young man caught his attention. “I’m one of the few who can offer it.”

  “It sounds like you do good work,” Virgin said, setting his glass down and reaching out to take the young man’s hand.

  “Who is this?” Parfour frowned.

  “A friend,” Odin replied, reaching out to clasp Virgin’s opposite shoulder. “Virgin, this is Parfour. Parfour, Virgin.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

  “I admire the kind of work you do, young man. I may not have the faith I believe I should, but I know that a lot of people depend on it, especially in times of war.”

  “Of war,” Parfour said, settling himself down into the seat across from them.

  While the young man internally debated the logistics of what Virgin had implied, Odin tilted his head to examine the house that Parfour had claimed as his own. Large, expansive, with more than two floors and adorned in fine creams and whites—glass plates hung on wire rims along the walls and the young man’s ornate but obviously-battle-worn staff was set in place above the fireplace that bloomed with light. To say this house was one bestowed upon a war hero would have diminished its properties, for in light of the situation, Parfour’s enlistment and faith had earned him a rightful home within one of the finest cities in the country.

  “They gave you this house,” Odin said, returning his attention to the young acolyte when he finished examining his surroundings.

  “They did,” Parfour nodded.

  “
Why? Or how, I should say.”

  “Many of the people who fled the city when it was about to be assaulted took with them their personal belongings—linens, treasures, weapons, that sort of thing. They haven’t come back, and have made no plans to, so the soldiers displaced in the war were offered the homes under the king’s jurisdictions. As to how I got this house, my service happened to be declared exemplary by the king himself and I was given one of the best in the Higher District.”

  “It really is a nice house,” Virgin said. “You must be pleased.”

  “I am.”

  “Are they taxing you on it?”

  “I assume they will eventually,” Parfour shrugged, “but right now I’m working off the good will of the people, serving under Father Ahmalya, that sort of thing.”

  “You’re training to become a priest?” Odin asked.

  “In time, yes. That is what I’d like to do with my life.”

  “I have no doubts you’ll get there,” Virgin said, reaching across the table to clap Parfour’s shoulder.

  When a smile was bestowed upon Parfour’s face, Odin couldn’t help but smile himself despite the fact that his emotions seemed all the more conflicted in the presence of such horrific circumstance. While his heart felt broken, and while his mind seemed more at ease than he could have ever imagined, there lay a conflicting notion within his mind that he could not be happy even though he was at rest with someone whom he considered a very good friend.

  “Can I ask you a few questions now?” Parfour asked, breaking Odin out of his trance. “I mean, if you’re all right with that?”

  “Go ahead,” Odin said.

  “Why were you gone for so long?”

  “Two-and-a-half-months of it was spent traveling,” Odin said, setting both hands on the table. “The rest of the time was spent trying to find peace with myself and my situation.”

  “Did you find it?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  “I’m glad,” Parfour said, extending a hand and setting it over Odin’s upturned palm. “Let me tell you what. Why don’t the two of you stay here for a few days, maybe until the weather gets a little better? God knows it’s only been blizzarding for the past month or so.”