King Callie: Callie's Saga, Book One

by B Lynch

  The Erimeni around Kells cheered at the display, and his heart thrummed with excitement. Here was the chance for the killing stroke; all he needed to do was kick Valric in the head, take the sword, and part him at the neck – or through the back, piercing his heart through the ribs – and yet, Kells resisted. Something inside him stayed his hand. It wasn’t the want for a show; he hadn’t won yet. And it’d been so long since he’d fought between the kelwa’s corners.

  Kells walked away from the fallen Valric, towards the laskat that had fallen free of Valric’s hands. He ignored the boos that came at him, from all corners. They wanted blood. They would get it, but not yet. He stepped over the laskat, turned around, and wedged a toe under the handle; he kicked it up into the air, and it fell just inches shy of Valric’s hands. “I don’t care for shows, either,” Kells said, as he watched Valric struggle to get up. First the right leg, then the left; the Prince had a dazed look in his eye. “I want to kill you on your feet, with your sword in hand. So take it.”

  “Thank you, for your foolishness,” Valric hissed, as he finally lifted himself up of the ground. Kells walked over to the other laskat - the one lodged in the dirt - and pulled it out. It was well-balanced, and good steel; he swung it through the air, and was satisfied. It would cut nicely.

  “Yom watch over me,” Kells said, as he lowered his hands on the sword’s handle, brought the blade down towards his hip, and stepped into a laskat stance he hadn’t needed in a decade - Bitter Wind. His left leg was forward, his right leg drawn back, and he rested his left hand on the pommel of the blade. He nodded to the laskat on the ground. “When you’re ready, Highness.”

  Valric bent down, and picked up his sword; he held it high, again, near the hilt, as if it were a Barrish great-sword. First mistake, Kells thought. Valric said nothing, at first, but he darted forward, to test Kells; nothing happened. Kells stood firm, and his sword didn’t budge. It waited. Valric moved to the right, and circled Kells, who kept his sword still and patient – waiting for the right moment. Valric attacked suddenly, and flashed forward with a great downward chop; Kells’ blade was there to meet it, but he didn’t provide full resistance. He simply blocked it, and let the blade slide down. It scored his shoulder on the way, but it was a wound Kells was willing to live with. He needed to, for his next maneuver to work.

  As Valric’s blade slid down the length of Kells’ sword, and toward the ground, Kells twirled around, and brought his laskat as close to his body as he could, for mere seconds; then he opened his grip, and lashed his arms out as he spun. By the time Valric could react, the sword sliced through the air, and bit at the Prince’s neck. It cut deep enough for blood, but not enough to kill.

  Valric’s left hand flew to his neck, to cover it; his face registered shock. He tried to swing the long blade with one hand, but Kells capitalized on that moment of weakness; the Erimeni blade ducked under the wild strike, and pierced Valric’s chest. The young prince gasped; Kells drew out his sword and plunged it into Valric’s stomach. “You should have listened,” Kells said, as the Prince’s body gave out on him; the strength escaped his royal legs, and he fell to the dirt with a blade in his gut, surprised beyond measure.

  “No,” Valric simply said, panicked and wild-eyed, speaking the word over and over, red bubbling out of his mouth until at last he said nothing. Kells pulled his soaked blade free from Valric’s chest, and knelt down to the Prince’s body. He made the sign of the Circle, and whispered a brief prayer to Yom. “May your ancestors look more kindly on you,” Kells muttered, “And may you have a few thousand years to think on what you’ve done.”

  As may I, Kells thought, as he got to his feet. He turned to look at the fourth side, where his soldiers sat; the Chief had joined them, and had taken his place on his throne of broken spears. He wore a delighted expression as he clapped for Kells. The imprisoned soldiers, however, glared at their captain. He knew well enough what their eyes held for him; for the time being, he ignored it.

  “Well fought, mixed man,” the Chief said, in Erimeni, with a broad smile full of browned teeth, “I knew you still had the four virtues in your heart. That,” he said, gesturing proudly to Valric’s fallen body, “Was renmit beyond measure. Your people are very proud of you.”

  “Half of them are, and I thank them,” Kells replied, subdued. “The other half will not be, but they are my concern. Not yours, Chief.” Kells looked around for Valric’s things, and didn’t see them; it struck him as odd. “What of the gift-bearers?” he asked.

  The Chief shouted in Erimeni, and three young men came running; Kells’ heart ached lightly as he saw them bearing Valric’s things – his armor, his sword, and his dagger. Only one was fit for a Chief; the others would be returned to his family. The three young men came to a stop in front of Kells, and faced him. He looked at each of the items for a time, before selecting the dagger – a gold-encrusted hilt, featuring polished emeralds and a bear’s head on the pommel. He took it up, bent both knees before the Chief, and offered it to him.

  “I give this gift as a token of the blood I’ve shed for you, and our friendship,” Kells said. “Keep it, and only let me reclaim it if I need you to shed blood for our children.”

  The Chief smiled, and accepted the knife with a bowed head. “My tent is always open to you, friend,” he said, finishing the ritual. “I look forward to fighting alongside you, someday.” Kells knew, however, that there was one more favor he needed to ask.

  “Before we leave,” Kells said, “I will need a pouch of Naeb’s Coil, like your children were picking. The prince needed it to cure his father’s ailments.” The anxiety burned in his gut; he couldn’t leave without the flower. The Prince was dead, but if Valric was right, the King needed to live.

  The Chief’s brows furrowed. “Naeb’s Coil?” he asked, confused. “How?”

  Kells was momentarily stunned. He had expected the chief to say yes, or perhaps why… but how was disconcerting. “What do you mean?” Kells asked.

  “When we find it, we powder it, boil it with water, and drink it before a difficult sayta,” the Chief said, using the Erimeni word for task, that also meant kill. “For luck, and for speed.” The Chief shook his head, and raised his eyebrows. “It has never cured any ailment I know of, except for difficult tasks. You never drank it, in your Father’s tribe?”

  The words had gutted him in a way that he hadn’t thought possible. “No,” he said, quietly; he was no small man, but it felt as if he was shrinking. His eyes darted away from the Chief, and looked down at Valric’s armor, still laying in one boy’s arms. “We’d never seen it.” His Father’s tribe had spent time in south, near the Ariaci border of the Freelands - before they were absorbed in a war between tribes, and his father left them for guard’s work in Barra. They took new names with their new lives; Joral became Gael. Rawa became Kells. And in all his time in his father’s tribe, he had never laid eyes on the plant, or even heard its name.

  “It’s uncommon, with these past winters…” the Chief said, before stopping; his tone changed, and he spoke to Kells in a gentler voice. “Are you feeling isbaht, friend?” he asked, using a word known to Kells, but until then, poorly understood; misery, wrapped in abominable, hopeless failure.

  “Yes,” Kells said, dejected, staring at his prince’s armor, focused on the relief of a bear that was molded into the chest. “A great deal of it.”

  The Prince’s body was clothed again in his armor, and loaded onto the back of Kells’ horse; the guards were given their armor back, and their swords, but told not to draw them again. Looped around the hilts were small red cords. As a soldier began to tug it off, Kells shouted at him, wide-eyed. “Don’t! Not yet!” he said. The soldier stopped, to stare at him.

  “It’s the sign of an oath of friendship,” Kells said. “Keep it on until we reach our borders, at least. If we find another tribe on the way home, they’ll give us safe passage.”

  The soldier stared at him harder. “Is that the truth?” he asked, bitt
er. “Or are you going to slit my throat, too?”

  Kells’s hands snapped outward, and gripped the soldier by the front of his armor. “He died, or we all died,” Kells said, as his knuckles grew white. “Remember that. And burn it into your mind that the flower we came all this way to find was worthless.”

  “You killed him for no reason, then?” the soldier asked.

  “No,” Kells said. “He almost brought us to war with the Erimeni. All of you, remember that,” Kells said, as he turned to face the other soldiers. “Because that’s our truth. The one we keep in our hearts, and never utter. We never speak a word of it. We’ll bring him home,” Kells said. “Then, we’ll say their truth. Two men died in battle. I fought alongside the Prince, and we saved the peace.”

  “Why keep that secret?” the bitter soldier asked. “Tell the kingdom. Let them know what a bastard he was. He deserves it.”

  “Because I asked you to,” Kells said, fiercely, tears brimming in his eyes, “I took his life so you could live. All of you. And I broke my oath to do it. I killed someone wretched - a rotten shell of a man. But when we return, I want them to mourn a hero. When we return, I want to protect his memory. Understood?” There were mumbles of discontent; Kells would not be deterred. “Is that understood?” Kells said again, louder, more forceful than before; the guards responded with resounding affirmation.

  The Captain of the Guard mounted his horse, and had a last look at the Erimeni village, and took a deep breath. He kicked his heels into the horse’s sides, and it thundered down the path from the village – towards Nemi’s Fist, and the borders of the Freelands. The rest of the soldiers followed behind him; he hoped the secret of the dead prince on his horse’s back would stay just that: secret.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  For two days, Caliandra stewed in worry and discomfort. She’d regretted her last words to him; how could she have called him that? She was right, but she had no right to it. She told herself that Valric had succeeded, and was on his way home, but she also woke up panicked, in the middle of the night; she saw him fight, and fall, and felt the blade slide into his gut as if it had pierced her own. She’d barely eaten. Eliya was hardly so concerned, and dismissed many of Caliandra’s worries over lunch. It was the first meal Caliandra had been able to stomach since Valric left, and only barely.

  “This is neither the most dangerous nor the most idiotic thing he’s done,” Eliya said, as they supped on white wine and sweet custard in the dining hall. The early afternoon light cascaded through the windows, and pleasantly lit Eliya’s face and her light blue dress; her friend Hanne, a lady who held no small measure of bitterness for Caliandra, sat at Eliya’s side in a soft yellow dress. “Valric will be fine,” Eliya continued. “He’s an expert swordsman. Kells is with him, as are seven of our finest guards, and his horses run like the wind. You needn’t worry at all. He’ll be back, and if Royth is right, Father will be in good health again. Be hopeful, sister.”

  “I do, all the same,” Caliandra grumbled. “He didn’t even bother to say goodbye to Father.”

  That lowered Eliya’s smile. “He didn’t?” she asked, concerned.

  “Why should he?” Hanne said, bordering on smug. “If his trip is quick, and the flower works, it won’t be necessary.” Eliya almost corrected her, but held her tongue; Caliandra noticed, and wished she hadn’t.

  Caliandra had never truly understood what made Eliya and Hanne such good friends. They had little in common, other than being noble, socially inclined, and occasionally cutting with their remarks. Caliandra dipped her spoon into the custard, and brought the creamy, sweet delight to her mouth as she dreamed of interesting ways for Hanne to fall off cliffs. Caliandra’s dear friend, dark-haired Mae, sat to her left, rapt by the conversation; she had already eaten her custard, and was waiting for seconds.

  “You do recall the time he and his friends found the fighting ring in Ariac last summer, don’t you?” Eliya asked Caliandra, with disdain for the memory. Caliandra saw her sister delicately fill her spoon with custard – such gentle, graceful movements. They contrasted greatly with the disgusted tone of her voice. Mae’s eyes widened at Eliya’s words.

  Caliandra remembered too well; one of Valric’s friends returned handless; another, headless, by the hand of some pit fighter. The king opposed Valric’s desire for revenge, and demanded he do nothing. Valric disappeared for two weeks with nary a word; when Valric returned, he was at the side of the dead lord’s father, each grinning and holding a severed head; one belonged to the fighter. The other, the man who ran the fighting ring. King Rionn was furious.

  “Father spent the better part of a year trying to fix that mess,” Caliandra commented, as she dug her spoon into her bowl. “As I remember, it was the Duke of Montagny who’d arranged the spectacle for his peasants, and had made a hefty profit on the gambling. He wasn’t pleased to see it end, and King Luc was less thrilled to hear about the consequences.”

  “Why did Valric go in the first place?” Mae asked, curious, leaning forward ever so slightly towards Caliandra. Dark black curls fell about Mae’s tanned face, hardly hiding her wide hazel eyes. “Did he tell you?”

  There was a sharp, pitched laugh from across the table. “Why do you think men do anything?” Hanne replied drolly, with a condescending smirk. “Or don’t you know anything about them?”

  Mae blushed, and scowled. “I do,” she said. “I know about generals, and warriors, and kings, and inventors...”

  “Titles aren’t as important as motivations,” Hanne said, as she raised an eyebrow, and smiled at Eliya. “Your betrothed wouldn’t do something so stupid for his own glory. He’s a hunter, not a fighter.”

  “Actually,” Eliya said, arching an eyebrow as she dug into her custard, “He might. But only to irk his father. Valkko is a… rather insistent man,” she said, after a brief pause – where Caliandra thought she might have risked saying something less kind. “I wish Mas wouldn’t try to fight him as much as he did. Laus has far more pressure from their father, and he handles it admirably.”

  “That’s different,” Hanne said. “Your brother is trying to be a man on his own terms. You should encourage him. At the very least, the arguments with his father would be enjoyable to watch.”

  Eliya paused, to drink from her cup of wine, and avoid Hanne’s suggestion. “This is rather good,” she remarked, distracted from her train of thought. “Callie, do you know where it’s from?”

  “Della Ferra, near the east Selenian coast,” Caliandra replied. “From Uncle Nessio’s vineyards.”

  “Goodness,” Eliya said, surprised. “I hope he’ll have enough for the wedding. Mas’s family would drink it by the gallon.”

  “You were saying about his brother?” Hanne asked, politely interrupting her. “He’s the one who’s set to be King, isn’t he?”

  “Sorry. It’s… it’s a very good pairing,” Eliya said, with a smile. “And Laus is married, unfortunately.”

  “Very much so,” Hanne said, a wide smirk on her face, accompanied by a raised eyebrow. It irritated Caliandra, as did most things about Hanne; she was haughty, self-important, ambitious, and, thanks to her friendship with Eliya, a frequent companion. Luckily, Hanne hadn’t said anything about Iaen’s marriage; that might’ve been the drop that spilled over.

  “I suppose,” Eliya said. “And what about you?”

  “You know my luck,” Hanne said, drolly. “All of those dreadful, backwater boys from home have sent me flowery poems and declarations of love. It’d be adorable if it wasn’t pathetic.”

  “Maybe that’s as good as you’ll get,” Caliandra said, glaring at Hanne from across the table. Hanne clenched her jaw, and gripped her spoon with unladylike anger, before a smirk crossed her face.

  “At least they’re still interested in me,” Hanne said, raising an eyebrow for emphasis as she turned to Caliandra. “I heard Lord Iaen’s already married... He couldn’t run away from you fast enough, could he?”

  Eliya glared at her; Ma
e seemed shocked that Hanne would say such things. Caliandra had expected them, and hoped Hanne would be decent enough not to mention them. But were their positions reversed, she might’ve been tempted to do the same. “Yes,” Caliandra said. “He is, and I have wished them endless luck.”

  “You should’ve saved that for yourself, I think,” Hanne snapped. “They have money, after all. You’ll need quite a bit of luck when your father’s passed.”

  Caliandra couldn’t believe her ears. “Excuse me?” she said, as her gaze darted upward, filled with anger.

  But insult was added to injury; Eliya politely inserted herself between them. “What Hanne meant to say is that you should be more… proactive in approaching suitors. You can’t afford to be as passive as you are, in your position.”

  Should I? Caliandra thought, angrily. Or should you stand with your sister, instead of your friend?

  “Your sister’s right,” Hanne said, with a smirk. “I think you should listen to her advice.”

  “I think you enjoy this too much for a lady,” Caliandra said, as she scowled, glaring hatred back at Hanne. “And don’t you dare bring up my father’s health.”

  “Maybe I won’t need to, if your brother returns,” Hanne replied. “But he should’ve come back by now, shouldn’t he?”

  Caliandra saw disapproval flash across her sister’s face. But again, she took no stand, and made no effort to put Hanne in her place. “We must think in the positive,” she said, “And pray that Yom guides him home safely.”