He woke from troubled sleep choking, a burning tickle in the back of his throat that no amount of clearing or coughing seemed to sooth. Lifting his head from the hard ground, his wild eyes flitted across the shadowed entry to the cave where he could see the last tendrils of light slipping away through the thick but scattered branches.
Finn and Lorelei had packed up their camp while he slept and were sitting almost impatiently by the fire waiting for him to wake. Lorelei stared at him, her large, almond-shaped eyes flashing like molten honey in the fire’s light, her mouth drawn tight at the edges as if the sounds he made in his sleep had frightened her.
Finn immediately made light of the situation, drawing attention away from his brother’s discomfort by announcing, “We need only put out the fire, and then we’re ready to go.”
Stretching into a seated position, his neck and shoulders ached like an old man’s, thanks to the cold, hard ground beneath him. Even as their little fire blazed and warmed the interior of the cave, the stone itself seemed inattentive to absorption and was still frigid to the touch. That cold seeped into his bones while he slept, making every one of them throb as if the stiff muscles cramped around them and squeezed every time he moved.
It had been years since he’d slept anywhere but his own bed, and though he liked to think he could tough out anything, as he rose and stretched the tension from his muscles he felt almost as soft and spoiled as the princess in their company when his mind started whining with silent complaint. He’d barely gotten enough sleep, in fact, he hadn’t felt like he’d slept at all and his head was thick and heavy with sleep’s lack. He only hoped he wasn’t expected to react to any volatile situations until he at least had some time to pull himself together, but he knew the likelihood was very slim.
While he gathered his thoughts and began layering the last of the dried meat into the pack he’d taken off one of their fallen guards, his brother and Lorelei put out the fire, dumping mounds of dirt over the flames to smother it completely before stomping out any underlying coals that might catch fire once they were gone.
Vilnjar took a meticulous inventory of everything in their possession before they departed, and then he walked through their little cave a second time to make sure they hadn’t left anything important behind. Not that they had anything important to begin with, but what they had managed to scavenge since their escape wasn’t easily replaced under the circumstances. He wore the knife he took on his belt, and strapped the broadsword he’d pried from Brogen’s death grip across his back. His pack was filled with dried meat and his water skin was heavy. Those provisions would sustain them until they got to Rimian, but after that, he didn’t know what to expect or how long they would last there.
He didn’t like that he didn’t know. Couldn’t stomach the idea that every moment of his future was so far up in the air he couldn’t reach it if he stood on his tiptoes. For the first time in his life, he had to rely on faith.
It was going to be one of the hardest things he’d ever done.
Once they were certain they hadn’t left anything behind, they set out, finding a southwestern trail that ran parallel with the road. That path would take them several miles out of their way, to the western coast of Leithe and the Sontok mountain pass. It was a little less than two hundred miles from Breken, not considering their detour west to follow the coastline. It would take them four days to get to the mountain, which some say was once a proud home for Dvergen’s sons. Buried for centuries beneath miles of snow, Great Sontok was said to be frozen to the fiery core that once fueled the forges of the mountain. Its distant peaks were still too far to see, but if they traveled through the night its jagged, white-capped peaks would surely be seen as the sun rose over their shoulders with dawn.
Viln had only ever seen the Sontok Mountains once in his life, their crumbling edges tumbling into the icy sea and creating a series of sharp, rocky islands off the western coast of Leithe. His father took him to Sontok to hunt Trygvln when he was only seven years old. The warmongering trolls inhabited the islands leading up to the shoreline, thriving, his father told him, on nothing more than blood and ice.
That hunt was the first in a long line of failures his father would never forgive. Upon first glimpse at one of the monstrous beasts, its gaping mouth filled with jagged teeth as sharp as knives, seven-year-old Vilnjar ran and hid. Deken called him a coward, berating him all the way to Breken, where they spent the night in his Aunt Thilde’s cottage. As part of his punishment for cowardice he was forced to tell everyone around the fire how he ran and hid instead of facing his foe.
Shuddering at the memory, he glanced toward his brother and felt a momentary stab of resentment. Had Deken lived, Finn would have been the perfect son for a man like their father. Bold, headstrong, a real warrior after Deken’s own heart. Viln never wanted to be a warrior or a hunter. He preferred to study and learn, but the very notion made his father scowl. Whenever his father would scold him, he would run away to hide, but his mother always found him. Eornlaith would crawl into whatever space he’d stuffed himself and draw him into her arms. She would stroke away his tears and call him the first real love of her heart and promise him that when he was a man it would be his choice if he wanted to be a warrior or a scholar, not Deken’s, and no matter what he chose she would always love him.
In the end, Deken hadn’t even been alive long enough to see him make his choice, but his mother kept her word when he chose the path of the scholar and diplomat, apprenticing himself to the very member of the council he replaced when the man finally passed away.
In the hours since they’d been exiled from Drekne, even that path had come to feel as though it had been the wrong choice. He daydreamed of doing grand things in the name of the Council of the Nine, of one day restoring the U’lfer to glory by following the wisdom Chancellor Cobin and the others had been pushing for years, but none of that would happen now. Even harder to swallow was the slow, painful realization that everything the council preached was wrong, and he’d been right there preaching with them.
Maybe he should have become a warrior, he thought.
They would glimpse the coast, but their travels would take them straight up the center of the mountain, through an abandoned, narrow passage the Dvergr maintained before their dwindling numbers disappeared into the annals of history. If they were lucky, they would avoid coming face to face with Trygvln, but even if they did avoid them, there were sure to be plenty more waiting for them in Rimian when they arrived.
He wondered if death was the only thing waiting for them in Rimian, and for a time he traveled quietly with that thought while Finn and Lorelei trekked on beside him. The two of them were quiet as well, but they seemed to have come to some kind of understanding while Viln slept.
Lorelei practiced her techniques while they moved, blocking, bashing invisible enemies and then stabbing them with her tiny sword while Finn criticized and inspected every move she made.
“I still don’t understand how you could grow up in a warmonger’s castle, and not know how to even hold a blade properly?” Finn scoffed derisively.
“I begged for lessons from the armsman, in case I ever needed to protect myself, but he laughed and asked me what need a princess would ever have to protect herself. That is what her king is for, whether that king be her father or her husband. He failed to mention I might need to protect myself from my own…” She stopped shy of finishing that thought and Finn picked up the trail as if to steer her back on course.
“Well, you’ll get there. I’ll see to that,” Finn promised, glancing over at her with that lovesick look in his eyes that made Vilnjar’s stomach wobble with unease every time he caught it. He almost liked it better when they weren’t talking to each other at all. “I learned from the best,” he boasted, throwing back his shoulders haughtily. “I was such a good student that not even the men who taught me could protect themselves last night when I freed us from their custody. By the time I’m done with you, Princess, even I’ll be a
fraid of you.”
“I thought you were already afraid of me,” she laughed. “I’m a dangerous outsider, don’t you know.”
“Shaking in my boots over here.”
“Oh for the love of the Ladies, would you two stop mucking about. We have a lot of ground to cover before sunrise if we want to make it to those mountains before they pick up our trail.”
“You heard the man, Princess. Stop mucking about and get serious with that shield.”
She glared over at Finn, her mood instantly soured by his use of that nickname—odd, considering it was the third time he’d called her that throughout the course of the conversation and the first she’d noticed. Finn shrank back as if she’d struck him and it was back to brooding and bickering for a while.
So much for peaceful discussion, Viln thought, but at least they were consistent. Bicker, tease, bicker tease.
They moved quickly through the shadows, Lorelei hacking an angry path with her sword through the brush and weeds that were almost as high as their hips in some places. She was leaving a trail in their wake that wouldn’t be easily missed if the hunters picked up their scent, but he was confident he’d thrown them far enough off their tracks that he didn’t warn her to stop. Maybe he should have, but every time he parted his lips to tell her to stop, he remembered she truly needed all the practice she could get, and if her arm wasn’t tired yet, it wouldn’t be long before it was.
One by one the waning moons rose, the strong draw of their power tugging on his soul the way it always did. The golden orange ball called Friegla appeared first, followed swiftly by the slightly more distant Kierda, a swollen, pregnant red globe against the cloak of the night. Madra, the largest of the three always took longer, her great weight rising from the dark horizon like a silver sun ascending to join the stars in the sky. By the time her body was completely visible, several quiet hours had passed and they’d seen nothing on the road but the occasional rabbit or squirrel.
It was getting colder with every step they took, the steam of their breath a hoary mist that seemed to illuminate their faces against the shadows as it caught in the light of the moons each time they exhaled. He kept waiting for Lorelei to complain about the cold, or being tired, about her arm hurting from all that swinging, but she didn’t utter a single word, and for that, Vilnjar was glad. She’d come a long way in twenty-four hours. Maybe there was hope for her yet.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Night wore on, the silent sounds of darkness carrying the three travelers well into early morning. In the distance, Finn could hear the consistent rush of waves crashing hard upon the shoreline they approached, the whispering whistle of the rising wind, the tempered beating of Lorelei’s heart and the occasional, heavy exhale of his brother’s weary breath, but the sound he’d been waiting for did not come. There were no howls in the night, no signal from the hunters that their trail had been discovered.
“We put a lot of distance between ourselves and Breken last night,” Vilnjar said. “If we go through half the morning and only take a bit of rest before returning to the road in the afternoon, we will cut a significant amount of time off our journey.”
“How significant?”
“We won’t reach the mountains for another day and a half, maybe two and a half days,” he shrugged his pack up higher on his back before adding, “but the more distance we put behind us, the better I will feel about things.”
Finn would gladly keep going, carrying on without rest until his body collapsed, but one sideward glance over at the princess told him she wouldn’t make it that far. Her bright eyes were rimmed with dark circles of exhaustion, made more ominous by dusk’s shadows, and every time he looked over at her he swore her shoulders sagged just a little bit lower than before. She’d stopped hacking away at the weeds hours earlier, returning the sword to the leather belt she’d knotted around her waist and trudging through the night without a single word of complaint.
The hunters tracking them wouldn’t stop for rest. The wolf could drive itself to the brink of exhaustion and then feed its energy on adrenaline alone, especially during a long hunt. The wolves would keep searching until they picked up their trail again, and if they happened to be caught off guard because they were resting, all three of them would be dead before they even knew what hit them.
Stopping was a bad idea, but he didn’t know how much longer she could go on without rest.
“You’re tired.” He fell into step beside her, their feet following the same rhythm even though he had to slow his pace to match her stride. It came naturally though, each step matching the steady pace of the heartbeat they shared.
“Aren’t you?”
“Nah.” That wasn’t entirely true. He was tired, but he’d walk for days without sleep, run even, if it meant getting her to safety. “I could carry you on my back if you want me to.”
She rolled her eyes at him, her forehead wrinkling as if she were annoyed by the mere suggestion. “My legs aren’t broken.”
“I was just offering,” he pointed out. “Trying to be a gentleman. I thought you’d appreciate that sort of thing since you… Never mind. Forget I even offered.” He started to quicken his pace, putting himself several steps ahead of her, and then she sped up too, catching up to him and reaching out for his arm.
“Finn, I’m sorry. I know you’re just being kind and I haven’t exactly showed much appreciation for all you’ve done for me.”
“No, you haven’t.”
It wasn’t deliberate, the resentment in his tone, but it escaped him before he had a chance to stifle it. He didn’t look over at her, but he didn’t tug his arm out of her grip either. Her touch was like fire upon his skin, igniting something inside him that longed to turn around and grab her, pull her close and hold her there until she felt it too. It terrified him to his core. What if the thins he’d said to Vilnjar turned out to be true? What if she never felt it, if he spent the rest of his life pining after a part of his own soul that didn’t want anything to do with him? There was no turning off the way he felt about her; he’d never experienced anything more powerful or real in his life.
“You have to understand where I’m coming from though, the things I told you yesterday…”
“Oh, I understand where you’re coming from perfectly, but I don’t think it’s fair of you to judge everyone in the world on the deeds of some jerk you didn’t even want to marry in the first place.”
“Then you don’t understand.” She jerked her hand away from his forearm and drew it close to herself, tucking it beneath her folded arms. “I did want to marry him. He was handsome and witty and he made me believe he actually adored me, that he really wanted to spend his life with me. I trusted him, believed everything he told me right up until the moment I heard him plotting to kill me, so I’m sorry if my lack of trust hurts your delicate feelings, but I can’t afford to make that mistake again.”
His delicate feelings coiled and twinged inside him and he actually bit down on his lower lip to keep from lashing back at her with a thousand truths she’d never understand. He could never betray her now that he’d met her, never lie to or hurt her. The bond he felt with her would not allow it.
“Some people are manipulative bastards,” he said, “but not everyone you meet has an ulterior motive, Lorelei.”
“I can’t afford to risk believing that right now.”
She couldn’t possibly imagine how much those words felt like a slap in the face, and when she pushed ahead of him, her legs carrying her quickly out of his reach, he let her go because he was too stunned to try and stop her from walking away. He couldn’t tell her the truth; she had to come into it on her own. Until she did though…
By the time they made camp mid-morning in a thick blend of pine branches, Finn was festering with pent up frustration and couldn’t have slept even if he wanted to. While Vilnjar and Lorelei took a couple of hours rest, he paced their small encampment, feeling her heartbeat inside him, listening to the wind and analyzing every smell tha
t dared pass by his face. There was still no hint of the hunters on the wind, but he knew they were coming. It was only a matter of time.
Packing up camp shortly after the sun reached its pinnacle, she seemed refreshed enough to resume the game of hacking her sword through the dry and dwindling foliage that dared cross her path. Finn watched her, occasionally calling out praise, but mostly criticizing her movements in hopes that she’d at least learn enough to go out fighting if it came down to it. He wasn’t even thinking beyond the present journey. He’d figure out how to stay alive in Rimian when they got there.
Continuing southward, Vilnjar’s promise that the mountains would rise into spectacular view held true. The sun’s light streamed across the snow-capped peaks in the distance, shedding cold light across the desolate land stretching out before them, winking out slowly and leaving its fading orange and gold residue like a smudge across the horizon. Those peaks grew larger as the night waned, looming in front of them like a beacon of hope he wouldn’t allow himself to embrace until he was standing on the other side of the mountain.
The air grew colder and colder with every step they took south, their breath clouding out in front of them with each silver exhale of warmth. As the night once more yielded to grey dawn, he saw the grass was stiff with a layer of frost crawling ever forward until it met with snow-covered ground less than two miles from where they stood. Before long they could feel the cold of that feathery snow seeping in through the leather of their boots, the cold wind nipping at their skin when they paused only long enough to find a place to rest for a few hours.
It was Lorelei who found the uprooted tree, its sprawling roots thick with frozen clumps of mud that would hide them from direct view of the narrow path they’d left in the snow behind them. She shivered as she hunkered down behind the veil of mud that hid her, drawing her threadbare clothes in tight around her, and though he hated to watch her shiver, even she insisted that having a fire in that place was a bad idea. There wasn’t a village in the backdrop to explain the trail of smoke leading to the sky, and if the hunters were out there, that single line would lead them straight in their direction.
Edgelanders (Serpent of Time) Page 24