The torke stiffened. A strange, unreadable expression crossed her features. “We’re under attack,” she said with unusual calm. “Go. Go! Warn your families. No one should be caught unaware.” A light blazed in her eyes, a pure, cruel joy of battle. She whisked her blade free.
As if it were a signal, seven strangers with swords and shields burst from the southern and eastern woods, their blades dripping scarlet rivulets.
The torke sprinted past the crowd of youngsters. She sprang for the warriors unhesitatingly, and the nearest students joined her.
Rache paused. It was not fear that held him; he would not admit such an emotion even to himself. Renshai trained all their lives for death in battle. But the torke had told him to warn his family, and his cottage lay to the west. Mama and Papa. My little sister. Rache whirled and pounded into the evergreen forest.
The hollow crash of swords chased him between the pines, echoing from the trunks. Someone screamed in pain, “Modi!” It was the name of a god, the son of the Renshai’s patron, and it literally meant “wrath.” Rache felt blood madness burn through him. It rose like instinct, though it came of intensive training. He had learned not to fight through injury, but because of it. A wounded Renshai became a crazed blur of battle, and his pain-cries spurred his fellows.
Rache’s legs ached. The air tasted caustic, and his lungs felt raw and parched. A figure materialized before him. He paused to identify it as a stranger, and the hesitation nearly cost his life. A heavy sword slashed for his head. Rache ducked, drew, and raised his blade to parry. Steel scratched steel. Momentum staggered Rache forward, and his follow-through drew the enemy sword harmlessly over his back. A carefully-timed backswing gashed the enemy’s thigh. The man’s leg buckled, and he collapsed. Rache continued running without looking back.
The woods seemed to close in on Rache, blotting the meager light of the moon. He sprinted over the paths from memory, racing toward home and the sounds of battle growing louder.
“Modi!” The cry came from ahead, in the voice of Rache’s sister. His heart leapt, despite the anguish in the shout. I’m getting closer. They weren’t caught asleep. Without enough breath for a battle cry, Rache burst from the woods. Moonlight dazzled him, intensified by a myriad reflections off swords and shields. Some of the enemy wore chain shirts that hung to their knees, but the Renshai disdained armor, shields, and bows as cowards’ toys. Swords dulled red with blood capered like living things, a fierce chaos of slash and counter. Even the youngest Renshai outmaneuvered the enemy, Northmen each one, but Rache counted four invaders for every friend.
A blade sliced for Rache’s chest. He blocked, catching a stroke so powerful, his hands stung with the impact. Ignoring the pain, he bore in. He slammed his foot onto the enemy’s, crashed his knee into the groin. The Northman off-balanced. Pressing his advantage, Rache cut for the neck. Before the blow could fall, a hand clapped to Rache’s forehead, and strong arms ripped him backward. Rache toppled, scarcely managing to keep hold of his sword. A blade in his new opponent’s hand whisked for his face. Rache parried, rolling to his feet. A back-step realigned him, an enemy to either side.
Both sprang at him. Rache lunged, in a feint, for the man who had felled him. The other made a wild attack for Rache’s unshielded back. At the last instant, Rache spun and slashed at the one behind. The sword whisked beneath the shield, opening the man’s gut. He crumpled as Rache whirled back to his other opponent with a frantic sweep meant only to force the enemy back.
They squared off. Smoke burned Rache’s eyes, and he gasped for each hot, dry breath. His chest felt on fire; his lungs rattled as if filled with blood. Beyond his opponent, there was no sign of his sister. He could see his mother engaged with three Northmen. His father, Kallmir, wove an agile web of steel between himself and his single opponent, driving his Northman to the edge of the woods.
Rache lunged.
Suddenly, Kallmir spun and caught Rache’s enemy by the hair. With a single stroke, he decapitated the Northman before placidly returning to his own battle.
Rache pulled his own thwarted thrust, for the moment without an adversary. He turned, scanning the masses for an enemy, when a hand closed over his own. He whirled, sword poised, recognized his mother and held the blow. “Mama?”
Sweat plastered yellow ringlets to her forehead. Her raised brows and the crinkles in her young face revealed an internal struggle. Her eyes looked as glazed as a becalmed sea, and her taut expression frightened him. “Rache, come with me.” She dragged at his wrist, drawing him away from the battle.
Rache tripped hesitantly after her. “Mama?” Her behavior made no sense to him. To run from combat was cowardice. Already, a new wave of Northmen had joined the fray, and a chorus of “Modi”s rose like echoes in a dozen different voices, each spurring Rache back to the fight. “Mama!”
Rache’s mother shifted her grip from his flesh to the material at the back of his tunic. She yanked, breaking into a trot, hauling an unwilling Rache behind her. “Rache, come with me. Just come with me.”
Rache staggered.
A moment later, Kallmir drew up, panting, beside them. “What are you doing?”
No answer. His mother broke into a ragged run, Rache bouncing along with her.
“What the hell are you doing?” Kallmir was shouting now. “You’re setting a bad example. There’s a war!”
“I have my reasons,” she snapped back. Her pace quickened.
Rache howled, struggling now. My mother’s gone insane.
A band of Northmen closed in from the east. Another chased the retreating Renshai, their battle calls frenzied and hungry as wolf howls.
“There are no reasons for cowardice!” Kallmir screamed something else Rache could not hear, but his mother’s answer came clearly to him.
“The prophecy at Kor N’rual. The Northern Sorceress’ prophecy. A Renshai must fight at the Great War.”
“A prophecy!” Kallmir shouted over the roar of flame and the victory cries of pursuing Northmen, growing closer with every step. “You would damn yourself and my child to Hel for a prophecy that bodes as much evil as good? Let the Wizards handle their own damned prophecies. The West is their concern, not ours. We owe them nothing. Nothing! Every life in the Westlands is not worth the cost of one Renshai soul.” He whirled suddenly, hurling himself onto the growing crowd of Northmen. For several seconds, Rache saw his father’s blade skip through the masses, flinging blood. Then Kallmir disappeared beneath the charge without so much as a dying cry. The Northmen’s pace scarcely slackened. Shore sounds wafted, soft beneath the shouts and the pounding feet.
“Papa!” Rache bucked against his mother like a madman.
“Rache, no.” She stumbled, and Rache’s tunic tore.
He sprang toward the battle, but his mother caught her balance and a fresh grasp. The noise of waves smashing rock sifted beneath the din of swordplay. Rache jarred backward, slipped, and his mother dragged him several steps farther. The Northmen closed the gap between them.
“Turn and fight!” Rache flailed. Death in glory. A place in Valhalla. Rache had learned his lessons well. “They’re coming closer.” He lunged, pulled up short by his mother’s grip, but his sword buried itself in a Northman’s gut.
Rache’s mother tripped him, heaving him backward. The sword ripped from his fist, sheering off calluses. Something sliced his side, flashing pain across his abdomen. Rache tumbled, and suddenly, there was nothing but air beneath him. The cliff faces of the fjord blurred past. Before he could react, even in panic, he crashed into the depths. Water spewed over him. Darkness pressed him, his consciousness jerking and swaying. He clawed to the surface, feeling the bubbles churned by his fall. The ebb tide dragged at him.
“Modi!” His mother’s scream echoed in the cavern. She crashed to a ledge, lying still, awkward and broken.
Stunned by the fall and the battle, Rache made no sound. He swam into the shadow of a cliff face and clung there, his ears full of voices amplified by the towe
ring stone, Northmen’s words in the high king’s tongue.
“Did someone get the child?”
“Sigurd’s blow knocked him off the fjord. Then the woman killed Sigurd.”
A third voice: “The boy’s dead.”
A new man continued the conversation. “Well, someone get down there and find the body, or it’ll cost us. Never saw a Renshai run from swordplay.”
One spat. “Cowards all. Dead cowards now.”
The voices receded.
The salt of the Amirannak Sea stung Rache’s hand and the gash in his side. Ghosts of blood curled into the water. And Rache began to cry.
* * *
Rache awakened bruised and battered in every limb, and the pain throughout his entire body made the superficial gash in his side seem trivial. Despite the spring weather, he felt chilled, his clothing soaked through, his skin macerated. He moved, feeling grit and seashell fragments shift beneath him. He opened his eyes and discovered only dark sand; he lay, facedown on the shore. Gradually, memory returned. He recalled swimming, longer, harder, farther than ever before. Disoriented by the darkness, Rache was caught by the mainland tide, tossed repeatedly against the cliffs, fighting at first from strength of will, then only from habit. Dimly, he remembered finding the open beach, hauling himself across the sand like a cripple, and there surrendering to a deeper darkness.
Rache twisted his head. The midday sun glazed into his vision, blinding him. He flicked his lids closed and sank back to the sand. Other memories assailed him then: hungry red flames consuming the only world he knew as home; death screams in wild, savage triumph; the silver clang and beat of swordplay that was deadly, beautiful music to the Renshai. Rache’s fists cinched violently around sand, shell shards biting into his palms. Again, he saw his father, silently trampled beneath a mass of flying swords, his mother’s shattered form on the cliffs, his sister’s death nothing but a pain cry in his memory. Tears rose, washing grit from Rache’s eyes, but he fought them down. My parents died in valorous combat. The brave dead should be glorified, never mourned. Though Rache believed the tenet, it was not enough to hold grief at bay. Faith stricken, he ground his face into the sand, besieged by a single, unspoken question: Why did I survive? But the answer came in a thousand different voices. It was the breath of the wind, the swish of the receding tide, the steady pounding of his own heart: Because, Rache Kallmirsson, your mother was a coward.
“No!” Rache shouted at no one, and his words emerged hoarse as a whisper. His hands spasmed, grinding the jagged fragments deeper into flesh. Guilt knotted in his gut, twisting with a pain worse than his strained and hammered muscles, the salt-rimed sword scratch or the bloody tears where calluses had torn loose from the palmar pads below each finger. Little of what had happened made sense to Rache. He had been told a Renshai named Episte was stationed in the high king’s city of Nordmir to uncover plots and inform the Renshai of coming attacks. But the Northmen had struck without warning. His mother had mentioned the need to fulfill a prophecy; yet Rache had always thought of prophecies as Wizards’ glimpses into a future already predetermined by the Fates, not events mortals must fulfill. And his father’s comment, that this prophecy boded as much evil as good, gnawed at Rache. Still, his mother had sold not only her life but her soul for him; and Rache had no choice but to survive. Maybe, if I can spend my own life bravely enough, the gods may find it possible to forgive her.
Rache uncurled his fists and rose to his hands and knees. Pain rocked through him. His vision spun, but he held the position, strengthened by another thought. If Colbey was, in fact, on his deathbed, surely he found an opportunity to die in combat rather than of illness. Rache staggered to his feet, gritting his teeth against the myriad aches inspired by the movement. Pain, at least, he understood.
Rache had lost his sword at the fjord, his sheath and sandals in the sea. Without the weapon he had carried since infancy, Rache felt naked despite the gashed and tattered tunic and breeks that, though grimed with sand and sour with old water, still covered him adequately enough. The taste of salt made him crave fresh water, and grit grated between his teeth. Where do I go? Rache turned his thoughts to his own survival, glad for the excuse to push memory to the background. Details receded, leaving a wake of sorrow.
Cold, alone, empty, Rache considered his next course of action. Obviously, hunger and thirst took precedence. The Renshai skills were few and specialized: swordsmanship, warcraft, medicine to protect the wounded from becoming infected and to heal the sick so they could live long enough to die in battle with dignity. In the warring years, the Renshai had gathered their food from the stores, herds, flocks, and gardens of their victims. In the subsequent twenty years of peace on Devil’s Island, they had turned to more mundane means. Rache knew how to hunt and fish, to gather certain roots and berries that graced the evergreen forests on the island. But without a bow, nets, or boats and ignorant of mainland plants, Rache found his knowledge woefully inadequate.
Needing a goal, Rache chose to head for the high king’s city. There he might uncover details of the battle; if other Renshai lived, he would need to track them down. There was still the Renshai, Episte, to find, though likely the king had discovered the spy in his castle. That would explain why the older Renshai had not warned his people of the Northmen’s attack.
Choosing a destination proved the easiest of Rache’s decisions. The history, linguistic, and geography lessons that supplemented Rache’s sword practices supplied enough information for him to know the Northmen lived from the Amirannak Sea to the Weathered Mountains, the Great Frenum Mountains to the east and across the continent to the west. The vast majority of the Northern tribes congregated around the Brunn River in the easternmost part of the territory. There were eighteen tribes, each with its own king who swore fealty to the high king in Nordmir. Uncertain on which side of the Brunn his swim had taken him, Rache could only guess the path to Nordmir.
Over the next few days, the quest for food proved consuming enough to keep Rache’s thoughts from the past. He appreciated the distraction, though it meant he often slept with his stomach empty and aching or spasming with cramps from some strange plant or berry that turned out to be weakly poisonous or indigestible. Where forest broke to farmland, he stole the rare chicken or fruit and grain stores when he could find them, but the spring plants had barely sprouted, and the fields were barren. Even in the harvest season nature was never kind to the Northlands.
By the seventh day of his journey, grime had replaced the sand on Rache’s face and clothing. His tunic hung, too large over jutting ribs, and his breeks bunched on his legs, itchy from dried salt. Rache straggled from the forest for what seemed like the hundredth time. But this time, instead of a young field or a pasture of goats nearly as lean as himself, he discovered a road scarred with wheel ruts and pitted by the passage of hooves and feet. A path this well used could only lead to a major city, likely Nordmir. Rache smiled, then, just as quickly, he frowned. He was uncertain where he had beached, and his geographical knowledge was sketchy at best. The sun had barely started its downward slide, and Rache could see the road ran east and west. Until now, he had traveled south.
Rache rubbed pine needles from his hair, longing for a bath. The sun hurt his pale eyes, making him squint, so he chose to travel east and keep the light at his back for now. Wary, he kept to the edges of the forest, skulking between the trees like an animal. The pungent reek of a campfire touched his nose. Rache froze. So far, he had not seen a single person on his travels, though the farms he passed had been well-tended. Silently, he faded back into the woods, creeping toward the smell. Gradually, the sweet aroma of roasting meat and tubers reached him from beneath the more acrid scent of the fire. Rache’s belly groaned hollowly. He had not eaten since morning, and then it had only been a handful of bitter flowers. His previous meal had come more than a day earlier.
Rache turned a curve in the roadway and, suddenly, he caught sight of a wagon parked on the path. Its unharnessed horse graz
ed the weeds on the roadside. A tent jutted over the cart bed, and fabric whisked against canvas as something moved about inside. Peering out between the tree trunks, Rache spotted the fire in a ditch beyond the horse. Brown potatoes interrupted the checkered pattern of the coals, and a small duck roasted on a spit. Fat dribbled from the meat, hitting the embers with a series of sharp hisses.
Rache knew any Northman who discovered his heritage would kill him on principle, but hunger made him bold. He slunk toward the camp, his gaze darting around the site. He saw no one, and the rustling in the cart continued. The greasy odor of the duck grew stronger, bringing saliva to Rache’s mouth, though his jaw felt pinched. Before he could think, he had a stick in his hands, but he hesitated, still two arms’ lengths from the fire. If I take this man’s food, then he’ll go hungry. Rache sucked in his cheeks, not wanting to inflict his own misfortune on another. On Devil’s Island, he would never have considered stealing food, nor would he have found the need; any Renshai would share with his own. But Rache was no longer among Renshai, perhaps never again. Now he knew only enemies who attacked like jackals, in unsporting numbers, unannounced, and at night, and then dared to call the Renshai, the chosen of Thor’s wife Sif, cowards.
Anger flared, driving through Rache’s guilt. He shuffled the last few steps toward the fire and thrust the stick among the coals. Even then, he could not bring himself to take much. He looped the tip of the stick behind one potato and levered it over the coals. It rolled to the edge of the fire. Another poke, and it spilled free onto the dirt.
A creak from the cart drew Rache’s attention. He glanced up in time to see a heavyset, blond man emerge from the tent. His head turned toward the fire.
Rache dropped his stick, darted forward, and seized the potato. It burned his fingers. He nearly dropped it, but squeezed it tighter and ran.
“Hey!” the man called after him. “Hey!”
The Last of the Renshai Page 3