by T L Drew
‘And you still have one?’ Lady Ostergaard asked, the room falling into a deadly silence.
‘No, I left it with Nora, when the Grey’s attacked the city,’ Jorgen admitted, their eyes glancing from one to the other. ‘But I didn’t wear it. I didn’t use it – and I urged Nora to do the same.’
‘Then how can we stop him? How can we make him pay for what he has done?’ The young Lord of the Emerald Isles asked. ‘He killed our fathers, burnt down our city, and word has it that he’s burning down village to village as he rides back to the south, raping and murdering everyone in his path.’
‘He has taken my daughter,’ Mary Ostergaard was certain. ‘Cursed ring on his finger or not, he’ll pay for it.’
‘We will get Nora back, and my brother, and all those he has taken.’ Jorgen assured them.
Henry Arrow’s eyes found the western king. He moved his muscled body towards the young man, his brown eyes wide and proud. ‘And when the Grey’s fall, you will rule everything, from the northern deserts to the snowy south, and all that lies between.’
‘You want this? All of you? I’m a swordsman, not a leader.’ Jorgen asked, even though he knew the answer. His father had been the King of the Balfold for decades, but Jorgen – in his own mind – was just a drunken boy. He didn’t know how to rule – he suddenly regretted ignoring his father’s many teachings and dull lessons. He knew how to fight. He loved his kingdom and his people, but to rule over more than just Balfold, should they succeed? The thought frightened him, but the lords and the ladies of the west had decided.
‘You have a good heart,’ Mary Ostergaard said, her eyes full of love for him. ‘My daughter chose you for that reason. You may not yet be the leader you wish to be, but you do what is right, not just for yourself or for my daughter, but for the entire realm. That was something that your father did not do. The Arus is behind you. The Arus will bend the knee to the King of Balfold, and become part of the west, should we win.’
Words caught in Jorgen’s throat. Before he could utter any words, Lord Caspian’s voice was heard over the murmuring of lords. ‘You have always done what you thought was right, Your Grace,’ Lord Caspian interjected. ‘I would proudly fight for you, until my last day.’
‘I’m with you, brother,’ Jakub added, placing a hand upon Jorgen’s shoulder. ‘We can do this. We can take Askavold.’
‘So be it,’ Jorgen said confidently. ‘We will take Askavold should Andor refuse to hand us his uncle, and Hakon Grey will pay for his crimes against our people.’
They all chanted with surety and passion, drinking to their king, despite no plans on how they were going to make Hakon Grey pay for his crimes.
That night, when Jorgen took to his bed in a small cabin on the outskirts of the town, he could still hear their passionate chanting of his new title, one he prayed to the gods that he could live up to – if he failed them, he would lose everything. He made a vow to remain sober, as long as he could manage, to keep his head clear for those who bent their knees to him, for Jakub, for the father he’d lost, for his own father, to find the woman he loved and the brother he missed with all his heart. He made a promise on that blasted ring of his – wherever it was – that he would find them and take revenge against those who did the people he loved harm.
Jorgen struggled to sleep; every time he drifted off into a slumber, his dreams would haunt him, dreams of what had conspired within the North Rock palace walls, dreams of his father hanging from his neck, dreams so cruel he found himself unable to sleep. His dreams twisted back to the heat of the ring burning hot on his chest, comforting, a desperate need to feel it back with him, even if it burnt his skin. He missed it, he craved it. Jorgen could still hear the ring’s voice as he slept, growing louder and louder and louder…until his eyes snapped wide open, jolting him from his restless slumber, and his perplexed mind propelled his body to rise from his bed as the night was still dark with the moonlight blocked from behind the endless towering trees. Something overcame him, the sounds of the ring still coursing through his mind as he regained consciousness, the coldness of his cabin chilling his barley clothed body to the bone. The ring’s whispering grew louder, almost so he could hear the words as though it was speaking into his ear, growing warmer and warmer the louder the sounds grew. His heart began to pound wildly in his aching chest, and urged his body towards his long sword with a painful limp from his arrow wound, and grasped Night as it leaned against his bedpost. He clutched it tight, bewildering thoughts overpowering him as the ring – that was not in his possession – called to him, urging his aching body outside of the confines of his cabin and into the hammering rain that fell between the gaps in the pine trees.
The chill bit at his healing skin as he listened to the ring, louder with each step, as though it called out to him; Jorgen was bound to it, and it was reaching out for him. The voice grew desperate as he urged his way by sleeping men, women and blacksmiths who refused to rest even though the night was nearly at its end.
He heard a voice faintly in the distance. He took another step forward; bare feet in the soil, letting the ring urge him deeper into the woods. He heard the voice again, louder, the sound of a woman – a voice that didn’t come from the ring. Then a second voice came, the shout of a man, bellowing the same distant word, echoing through the trees. Shouting together, he heard the word again and again as he moved closer and closer, their shouting overpowering the ring’s voice, and as they grew closer, Jorgen’s grasp on Night grew tighter.
‘Who goes there?’ Jorgen shouted back, raising his weapon as the rain soaked his bare, healing torso. His shouting woke many of the soldiers that slept under shelter of the branches of the trees – they were quick to make a stand, drawing their swords, spying their king barely clothed in the rain, raising his weapon. The ring was somehow comforting him from afar, urging him to lower his blade, telling him there was nothing to fear. It was then that he heard the shouting again, clearer now, so clear he could hear them.
‘Jorgen!’ The woman’s voice shouted, echoing through the trees.
‘Jorgen! Is that you?’ He heard his brother’s voice. He would have known it anywhere, low, breaking into a man’s voice, a slight cracking to it.
‘Your Grace?’ One of the soldiers asked, moving to his king’s side.
‘Lower your weapons,’ Jorgen urged, his heart slamming in his chest as he heard them. ‘It’s my brother,’ he said, hearing Nora’s voice over the rain and the wind. ‘And the daughter of Mary Ostergaard.’
Jorgen found himself running barefooted over the damp soil before his soldiers could reply. He dropped his blade in the damp soil, branches breaking under his skin, cutting his feet as he ran with a stagger from the pain of the arrow wound, but he urged himself onwards, desperate, overcome with a need to be with them, to know it was truly them. ‘Erik?’ He shouted. ‘Erik? Where are you? Nora!’
Jorgen’s heart stopped for a moment when he saw through the dim moonlight, silhouettes emerging through the trees. He couldn’t see red hair the colour of autumn leaves in the darkness, but he knew it was her, and a crippled boy, his arms wrapped around the neck of a soldier. He ran to them, and knew his prayers had been answered. He could feel the warmth of the ring as he drew nearer – he grew desperate for it.
‘Jorgen!’ Nora screamed, her eyes finding him in the darkness, her body propelled forward as she desperately ran, leaving Erik and the soldier behind as they struggled to trail behind her. ‘He’s alive! He’s here!’ She screamed back to Erik, running into Jorgen’s arms. Nora fell into his embrace, and his knees fell to the wet, snowy floor as he held onto her.
‘You’re alive!’ Jorgen shook, feeling how thin she had grown, how she trembled as he held her, wondering if he was still sleeping. ‘I told everyone you were alive, but I didn’t believe it, and now you’re here…’ he stammered, running his hand over her damp orange hair – she was cold and wet, but he could feel the heat of the ring in the palm of her hand as she pressed her clenched
fists against his back, pleading to come back to him.
His eyes glossed upwards from her orange hair, finding Erik approaching his older brother, his arms wrapping around a Night Cloak soldier’s neck, his twisted legs dangling in the air. ‘A man said father did not make it.’ Erik said, his face barely seen by Jorgen’s black eyes in the darkness of the night. ‘Is it true?’
Jorgen nodded his head as he held Nora in his arms, both of them shaking from the cold. ‘I did all I could,’ the western king urged, Erik’s eyes finding the scars over Jorgen’s face in the darkness, and the young boy knew it to be true. ‘But you’re both alive – and that’s all that matters now.’
GORAN
Goran’s old, blissful memories had been dominated by only the gruelling hammering of rock, day after day, lash after bloody lash – he was hammering away at it, always hammering – and it had become his life, an endless cycle of hunger, thirst, the pain of the whips and the hammering of rock in the mines, searching for gold. Goran’s strenuous recovery had been swift – and once again he had been forced back into the gold mines to dig for what wasn’t there.
Time and time again, the riling sounds echoed through deafening ears, driving the prince to a madness he had never felt. The sounds of the blunt blades crashing against hard rock again and again were enough to drive any man into a crippling insanity, and Goran’s head felt as though it might explode. He tried to make a quiet song of it, the way that the slaves around him hammered into the rock. He tried, but it came to no avail. The prince tried with all of his might to pretend that the rock was his brother’s head. It didn’t help much. He had lost all hope that he had ever possessed, that he would leave Solitude Island, that he would take revenge for his beloved father. Goran Grey had accepted his cruel fate, but he was determined not to go down without a fight.
Long, exhausting hours went by within the dark confines of the desolate gold mine before Goran noticed that he was being eerily watched. He could feel eyes upon his rapidly thinning frame. Gawking white eyes glossed over his body, running up and down his persons from his raw, bruised thighs to his scarred and blooded back. The eyes landed upon his pale, cut face. He glanced over his aching shoulder. Two Afterling guards were staring at him. Goran did not like the way the slavers were glaring at him with menace. Goran was fast to look away, back to the hard rock of the wall without gold, and kept his dry, cracking lips sealed firmly shut.
They stared at him with haunting white eyes, with recognition, golden whips in their hands lased in blood. ‘You’re that prince that killed the king, ain’t ya?’ One of the Afterling slavers hissed with a toothless snarl, looming ever closer as Goran swung his blunt pickaxe again and again against the hard rock. They were not the first to recognise the prince, and they wouldn’t be the last.
‘I heard it was the other one who killed the king, the one that sits on the throne.’ The other Afterling man spoke certainly, his voice rough like his black beard, braided from his chin. The mention of Kodran Grey sent bitter anger pulsing though Goran’s battered body. His ring burned with his own fury, but Goran remained quiet, hammering away at the rock and avoided their cruel gaze.
‘It was this one who did it; he’s got the look of a killer.’
‘Killed your father, did you boy?’ The Afterling taunted, looming over the prince in rags. ‘Kodran deserved everything that came to him, I say.’
Goran had learned when to keep his mouth shut. He had learned, but he didn’t listen to his own protests as his anger boiled over and exploded from his dry throat. Words slipped unwelcomed from his cut lips. ‘I didn’t kill my father. If you had half a brain between you, you would know that.’ Goran Grey hissed, turning his head over his aching shoulder and stared upwards into their cold, white gaze.
A powerful whip lashed across his bare torso. Goran dropped his blunt pickaxe, the sound reverberating off of the rocky walls. He bit his tongue between his lips, drawing blood, but the shouts of pain escaped from his scarred lips regardless. He could feel his own blood cascading down his thinning torso from the lash of the callous leather. He braced himself for more lashings, but only one lash met with his broken skin.
‘Let that be a warning to you, boy. Next time, we’ll cut your tongue out.’ The black-bearded Afterling warned with venom on his tongue, pointing a fat finger in Goran’s dirty, gaunt face. The prince was quick to nod his head in obedience, aware he was lucky to have only received a single lashing, despite the pain that coursed through him from the cruel leather weapon.
Goran bent his bruised knees with gritted teeth and grasped the dirty pickaxe from the rocky floor, pain surging from his whipped and bloody torso. The prince could feel his thick blood running from his battered torso to his raw thighs. He raised his arm and painfully hit the pickaxe into the rock, continuing to mine for gold that was not there. His silence did not stop the Afterling guards from toying with him, trying to find what made him bite. They want an excuse to bring me pain, he knew.
‘I heard Andor Grey fed your father’s body to his dogs,’ one of them said with a toothless smile. ‘I heard your wife has been fucking that brother of yours, too.’
The prince bit his tongue and continued to chip away at the rock. ‘I heard that the king’s guards take turns on his whore wife–’
Goran dropped the pickaxe. The sound cut off the Afterling guard’s cruel taunts. The prince spun on his cut heel to face his captors, and moved towards them threateningly with brave stupidity. The bearded Afterling guard pushed Goran with the giant palms of his hands; the prince slipped from his cut feet, his body falling to the hard rock with a painful thud, and the iron chains rattled around his chafing, bloody ankles. The pain coursed through him like poison in his veins, but the prince made no sounds. He reached once more for his pickaxe, and rose to his feet. ‘You won’t eat for a week for that,’ one of the men sniggered cruelly. ‘I’ll have you put on the rack, too.’
‘Now what’s that on your finger?’ The ring caught the eye of the toothless white-eyed man. Goran took a step back, grasping his pickaxe tighter, his heart flipping in his chest. The man took a step closer, his whip raised and his eyes glued to the ring. Goran backed himself against the stone wall as the ring burned his finger with worry.
‘That’s a pretty ring you got there, boy.’ The other said, his white eyes fixated on the small black band around Goran’s scarred finger.
‘Who did you kill to find that?’
‘I killed no one,’ Goran spoke quietly, carefully, his back pressed firmly against the icy rock, a sickening feeling in his stomach. ‘It was given to me by my father.’
‘You shouldn’t have that; we took everything when the ship arrived.’ Not everything, Goran thought.
The Afterling men drew so close to the prince that Goran could smell the foul stench of rotting flesh on their stale breath. He could back away from them no further as they quickly advanced upon him. The guard without his teeth reached for the prince’s hand. ‘Come ‘ere boy, let’s have a closer look at that pretty ring.’
Darkness and dread shrouded the prince like a snow storm. Goran swung the pickaxe without a thought coursing through his urgent mind, a desperation to keep it on his finger and out of their hands – suddenly, he would have done anything to keep it. The blunt end of the pickaxe crunched into the bearded man’s thick skull with a loud shatter of breaking bone, sudden strength from the ring pulsing through his veins. Blood splattered over Goran’s pale skin. He was showered by a sea of crimson as he hammered and hammered away at bone. The man choked into a swift death, blood spurting from his fat lips. The toothless guard drew a shining dagger from his hip in his free hand and lashed his whip at Goran Grey with the other. ‘You’re going to suffer for that, like you have never suffered before!’ He screamed, lashing the leather at the prince. It caught Goran’s icy skin and cut him over his chest. The prince grasped the dead guard’s golden sword from his sheath as the whip struck him, letting his pickaxe fall to the rocky floor. He thrust it forward
as Afterling guard stuck the dagger into Goran’s battered shoulder. A pained scream escaped his lips as he thrashed the sword, stabbing the guard with the pointed end into his exposed stomach. His blood washed his golden shawl red as Goran withdrew the shining blade from the guard’s brutalised stomach.
The guard screamed as he slipped into death, and Goran Grey knew that the Afterling could hear the shrieks from the entrance of the mines.
‘By the gods, what have I done?’ Goran mumbled, his hands shaking as he grasped the golden blade, showered in a blanket of fresh blood; the Afterling’s blood, and his own. Pain oozed through his stabbed shoulder and the lashes from the whip. The world was blurred around him as he could hear muffled sounds of slaves screaming around him. ‘What do I do, what do I do? Gods, help me.’ He muttered again and again as his head struggled to clear. His head was pounding wildly. His breathing was laboured and rapid. His hands were soaked in gore. He knew if he remained where he was chained, he would suffer an even worse fate, a pain like no other he would ever feel – killing an Afterling man held the highest of punishments.
You have to run, Goran, he told himself, and with the aid of the ring upon his finger, everything suddenly cleared. He knew what he had to do.
The Prince of Askavold delved swiftly into the Afterling’s golden pockets and felt a cold iron band on his fingertips. He pulled the ring of keys from the golden silk and sifted through the tens of tiny metal keys, placing each one in the keyhole of his painful, icy shackles and turning without success. He could hear footsteps running through the tunnels. They had heard the commotion. Slaves around him were shouting and screaming at Goran for him to release them from their chains. He tried to the next key as sweat dripped down his forehead; his shaking hands forced it into the keyhole, turned, and click. The shackles popped free from bruised and bloody ankles. Goran breathed a sudden sigh of relief, although he was far from safety.