“In your bed no doubt, you disgusting whoreson!” Rokafu rages.
“I mean no such thing,” Rael replies calmly. “I have my own woman in the Northlands, well beyond the Narrow Sea, even Aquis. We are known as Dahken, and your daughter should know what that means.”
“It means nothing to neither my ears nor hers. I am her father, and I alone will teach her of her life until she is ready to bear a worthy warrior his sons. She can learn nothing from a steel wearing worm such as yourself!”
Rokafu’s entire form quivers with rage, and a smile touches Rael’s lips as the Shet speaks these last words. They seem somehow ironic as the man’s manhood flops with his anger while he speaks of worms. Rael forces the smile away with the knowledge that he is actually in a rather deadly situation. While he could likely kill Rokafu should the Hettal attack, he cannot possibly escape the entire village and its at least three score of riders.
“I mean no disrespect,” Rael repeats.
“Then leave,” Rokafu booms, “whilst I still allow it.”
22.
“What are you doing in my home?” Rael asks the wide framed Northman.
He stands suddenly from a kneeling position just inside the house, clearly startled by Rael’s appearance. He’s neither a tall man nor a short one, standing several inches shorter than the Dahken, but his shoulders appear almost as wide as he is tall. Not uncommon to his people, he has long red hair that he wears unrestrained and looks dirty and unkempt. Fiery green eyes look back from under his bushy red eyebrows, and a sparse beard tries but fails to cover the man’s pale, young face.
“I’m… I’m, uh,” the Northman replies haltingly, and then he shakes his head as if clearing a fog. “I’m replacing your door. It split.”
“Where is Ricka?” Rael asks.
“Fetching some water, I think.”
“Then I will have to wait for her,” Rael concludes.
The Northman steps aside as Rael enters his small home, giving a glance off to the south as he does so. Inside, he finds things to be much as he left them two years ago, and he sets about removing his armor. He continues to look around as he settles in, and his eyes narrow on the tiny square table at which they sometimes ate their meals. Two wooden bowls, likely left over from the morning meal, sit there, and one is roughly half the size of the other.
Rael has about found a place for his things when the Northman announces, “I’m done. Ricka can find me when she’s ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“To pay me,” the Northman replies with a shrug.
“Oh, of course,” Rael says, feeling foolish. “What is your name, Northman?”
“Djarl.”
“Thank you, Djarl, for helping to take care of my wife while I was away.”
The Northman nods sheepishly, his eyes on the floor, as he gathers a few carpentry implements the likes of which Rael does not know the names. He watches as the red haired man strides north through the village, disappearing amongst the other villagers, and he wonders if he knows the young man from before he left. He steps onto the slate path that leads from his home to the village’s dirt road and finds himself staring south off into the south.
The thud of something heavy hitting the hard ground followed by the splash of water breaks him from his reverie, and Rael turns to see Ricka only a dozen paces away. A bucket of water is on the ground next to her, having falling from her outstretched left hand. It landed upright, but the water sloshes back and forth dangerously. Her soft, brown leather boots are wet at the toes. Her face is more beautiful to him than ever, and he smiles as he finds her eyes.
Then Rael realizes something is different as his view of Ricka widens, almost as if he were looking down a tunnel at just her pretty face. Following her right arm down to the hand, he finds that it holds the hand of a tiny creature. A small boy, barely old enough to walk he thinks stands there, just looking at him. The air rushes from Rael’s lungs as he looks on the child, who looks just like his mother with red hair. Something akin to sadness wells up within Rael – a tingling sensation behind his eyes – yet he smiles without reason. As he rushes forward, Ricka picks up the boy, and Rael half crushes them both in an embrace.
“By the gods, I have missed you,” he whispers, for he doesn’t trust his voice not to break, and a lone tear escapes one eye as he smells her hair. He pulls away to see tears running down Ricka’s face as the child looks ok, bewildered. “I am so sorry I have been gone for so long.”
“I feared you were gone forever,” Ricka replies.
“Never. Is this...?” Rael begins to ask, but he stops as if in fear of the answer.
“This is Werrin,” she answers, “your son.”
“When?”
“Three seasons ago, three seasons after you left,” says Ricka, looking into their son’s face. “We had one last, glorious night together before you left, if you remember.”
“How could I forget?” Rael replies with a wide smile. He holds his hands out to the boy. “Can I-?”
She holds Werrin out to Rael, who takes the boy with a hand under each arm. He’s never held a child before, and he tries to match the way Ricka did it, allowing the boy to rest on Rael’s hip with an arm around his back to support him.
“Hello, Werrin. I am your father,” Rael says, and the boy begins to cry and hold his arms out toward his mother.
Ricka takes him back, saying, “Oh, come now. Stop that. Don’t worry,” she says, looking back at Rael, “he just doesn’t know you yet. Let’s go inside.”
As she moves past him, Rael leans over to retrieve the fallen bucket of water, whose contents have finally settled into calm. He follows his wife and son inside, pausing before he shuts the door to take one final glance south.
23.
“I must leave again,” Rael says quietly so as not to wake his son, who snores softly on his side of the room.
“Why?” Ricka asks, a bit more loudly than he would have liked, for that their son is asleep and that she is very close to him as they lay in their own bed of skins.
Rael rolls onto his back to stare at the ceiling, though he cannot really see it in the dark, and answers, “Something calls me south, and I have ignored it for years. I cannot anymore.”
“Ignored it for years?” Ricka asks incredulously. “How many years?”
Rael looks to her face, which is hard to make out in the darkness, and he answers slowly, “Since long before I came home, since I sailed across the Narrow Sea into Tigol.”
“Then you could have followed the call or whatever it is when you came back through the West two years ago?!” she shouts at him, and Werrin stirs a bit in his sleep.
“Please do not yell at me,” Rael replies calmly, keeping his voice low.
“Don’t yell?! What the fuck did you expect me to do?!” she screams, and she flips over onto her left side so that her back faces him. “Just go now. Be done with it.”
“Do not be angry with me,” Rael implores. “You do not know how hard it has been for me, ignoring my blood for these last two years. I am constantly on fire with the need to go south.”
Receiving no answer, he too rolls onto his side. He cuddles up to naked body, attempting to match her feminine curves with his own, and he rests his mouth gently on the crook where her neck meets its shoulder. He hopes for some motion of her body against his, no matter how slight, to show some amount of acceptance of what he has to do. Instead she jerks her backside toward him violently, accompanied by an elbow thrown backward into his stomach.
“Get away from me,” Ricka says harshly, and her voice contains only venom.
“I told you years ago that this would happen,” Rael reminds her as he rolls onto his back again. “I told you that at times I would have to leave. I told you that I can ignore it for some time, but that eventually my blood feels as if it will boil if I do not go. You said that you understood, that your Lorina had spoken to you of it.”
“Don’t bring her into this.” Ricka turns to f
ace him, and her face is made of stone. “Why didn’t you look into it on your way back?”
“Because I was tired. I had journeyed all across Aquis, Roka and then Northern Tigol. I journeyed to the eastern coast and then into the Shetlands. I had finally found two of my kind, alive, and failed to bring them with me. I only wanted to come home. To you.”
Ricka’s hard features soften ever so slightly at this. Some of her blond hair has fallen in front of her face, and she reaches up to push this back behind her left ear. “How long will you be gone?” she asks.
“I cannot be sure,” Rael answers, knowing it is the wrong thing to say, and her jawline hardening up as she looks on him with those sparkling blue eyes confirms his belief. Women are such complicated creatures – they demand honesty, yet the truth only causes them to be angry. “A year perhaps.”
“A year? A year?! Last time you were gone, I carried and bore our son. I raised him for two years without his father! How can you do this to me again?!”
“I have no choice.”
“No choice? That’s horseshit!” she all but screams, and their son snorts as his snores cease for a moment. When he resumes, she says more quietly, “Why bother? You know what you’re going to find! You’re going to stomp all around the Shining West, chasing whatever it is you chase, and when you find it, it’s going to be the same thing it always is. You’re going to find some long dead remnant of your people or some relic. Or you’re going to find someone who tries to kill you or a Dahken who will not come with you. Why bother? Stay here with us!”
“I want to.”
“But you won’t.”
“I cannot,” Rael clarified, and he reaches up to caress her face. Just as his hand would touch her skin, Ricka jerks back from him and rolls back onto her side to face away from him. Rael lets his hand drop beside him.
“Just go. Go now. I’ll tell Werrin you had to go. I want no teary farewells around him. He’s a Northman; he must grow strong,” Ricka says coldly.
“I would rather wait until morning so that I may tell him myself,” Rael argues.
“I would rather you not.”
“I also would like a decent night of sleep before I start a long journey.”
“Well at least we can provide you that,” Ricka spits hatefully, and she says no more. Rael does not sleep well at all, and when the roosters crow at first light, he starts awake as if he had just finally fallen into a doze.
The Dahken retrieves his armor from its place in the corner and straps it on by himself as he has done so many times before while his wife rouses their son. While they head off to the morning cook fires, Rael crosses the village retrieves his black stallion from the stables, well aware that the villagers watch his every move as they have always done. He returns to the small stone house and begins to load his meager but necessary supplies, for he learned a long time ago to travel light and replenish as necessary.
By the time he finishes, Ricka and Werrin return from breaking their fast, and the boy runs to his father to wrap his body around Rael’s armored leg. Rael laughs as he tries to disentangle the red haired child, and then he kneels down to bring his eyes to Werrin’s level. Rael smiles as he realizes how tall his son has gotten since he first saw him almost two years ago, and his smile fades as his eyes grow sad.
“What’s wrong?” Werrin asks.
“I have to go for a while,” Rael answers.
“Where?”
“South into Aquis, I think.”
“Can I come with?” Werrin asks innocently with the excitement of some adventure outside of his own small world.
“No, I cannot be sure it is safe.”
“I’m strong. I’m a Northman!” Werrin protests.
Rael laughs and tousles the boy’s hair with one hand while pulling him into an embrace with the other. When he releases his son, he says, “I know you are, which is why I need you here with your mother. You can protect her while I am away.”
“I will, father,” Werrin says solemnly, and then he stomps over to his mother, who is busying herself with a bucket full of water. He stops next to her, turns and stands with his arms crossed over his chest and clenches his jaw as if he is a professional soldier, a solemn guard with a grim task.
Rael stifles a chuckle as he approaches them with a smile. “I suppose it is time.”
“Fine,” is all Ricka will say, and she does not look up at him. She feigns cold indifference, but anger smolders her very being. Her pale white skin and blond hair has never been more beautiful, and for just a moment, Rael almost turns to his stallion to unpack the animal. As soon as the inclination comes to him, fire shoots through his veins, and his feet urge him south.
“I will return as quickly as I can,” he says, receiving no reply. “When I do, I will be certain to bring gold for the village.”
Rael knows she will not answer, will not turn to him, for to do so would be to indicate forgiveness or understanding, and the fire of the North burns too strongly in her blood. Waving a final goodbye to his son, Rael mounts his horse and turns to ride toward the cook fires. As he appropriates a large piece of meat to eat as he rides, a thought occurs to him, and he turns the stallion around.
He rides through the village toward Djarl’s well made, timber home. The Northman is atop the cottage, mending its roof when the Dahken rides up to it, and he stops suddenly to gaze at the mounted warrior. Though upon his horse, Rael would be much taller than Djarl, the Northman now towers over him, and the two regard each other quietly. The red haired, freckled Northman looks like a king upon his throne as he sits atop his house.
Rael is the first to break the silence as he calls out, “I must leave for some time. I would take it as a personal favor if you would watch after my family while I am away.”
Djarl starts to speak, but he instead closes his mouth and nods toward the Dahken. Taking it as acceptance of the task, Rael turns his black stallion and begins to ride away slowly. “Dahken Rael?” he hears Djarl call from behind him, and he turns back around.
Again the Northman looks as if he wants, needs to say something, but now that he is confronted with the opportunity, he looks away and then down to the ground. He appears unable to find the words he seeks, and for just a moment, something akin to guilt flashes across his face. Finally, he looks Rael in the eyes and says, “I will take care of them. I swear.”
Rael nods and rides away.
* * *
“What do you here, stranger?” asks the Westerner in a most challenging tone. He is not a large man, standing a little under six feet, though he looks small in front of Rael mounted on his black stallion. He has the lean, hard body of a farmer with skin weathered almost brown, but somehow Rael wagers that his skin is as white as could be under his tunic and breeches. He has the normal almost black hair of a Westerner, cut in a short bowl common to laborers and hard gray eyes.
“I am Dahken Rael,” Rael replies, and after a moment, he realizes that he has not answered the man’s question to his satisfaction. “I have traveled far for what I seek, and I was not sure he existed. But now I see I was right. I have come for the boy.”
“Be off,” the man commands without a moment’s hesitation, and he motions for his wife and gray skinned son to fall behind him. “He is my son, and no man has claim to him.”
“Farmer,” Rael says in the most matter of fact and reasonable tone he can manage, “this boy is no more your son than I am your father. He is not of you, and there are those who would control the power in his blood. I must show him how to use it.”
“I said be off Dahken Rael,” the Westerner reiterates. “My son stays with me; I’ll defend myself if I must.”
“No doubt you will,” Rael replies quietly, and he smiles slightly as he considers how he might react to some stranger appearing at his doorstep attempting to claim Werrin. “I will leave, but know something farmer. There are those who would take him from you regardless of any fight you put up, and they may not be so respectful of your wishes.”
Such had been his strategy during his entire journey through the Shining West. He hadn’t felt the need to hide himself this time as he had so many before, so he simply rode across the countryside in his armor with no robe, hood or cowl. He replenished supplies only at small villages or when he stumbled across traveling merchants. From one of these on a particularly windy summer day, he purchased a brown leather circlet. It was prettier than it was valuable, as it had three glass gems that the man claimed to be authentic, but it served the job of keeping his hair mostly restrained once he placed it over his forehead. He had moved through the West so many times over the decades that he knows every major city, town and temple in Aquis, which makes it easy for him to avoid Garod’s priests or other major officials. Until he knew his blood was pulling him straight for Martherus.
Rael did everything he could to avoid heading for the second largest city in the Shining West, for the place in which he had slain a Paladin. He felt something pulling him west, away from Martherus and Aquis, so he followed it in the hopes of gaining some satisfaction. He had just barely made it into Akor when whatever pulled him suddenly began moving south at a great speed. Every day he continued west, he had to turn more south until he was simply heading south. Rael used the opportunity to visit Sanctum and found the old castle exactly as he left it. As far as what he was chasing was concerned, it had long turned due east, which meant it sailed fast down the Narrow Sea.
Blood Loss: The Chronicle of Rael Page 17