As he got older, the differences between himself and every other barbarian became more obvious. At times he hated himself for being the runt; he hated his father for abandoning him, and he hated his amma for saving him. His early years were hard; had it not been for Chief, Talon may have turned out quite different.
On his fifteenth birthday, his amma gave him a timber wolf pup she had found in the forest to the east of the village. The pup’s mother had been killed by hunters, and though its brothers and sisters had been taken to be used as sled wolves, the pup had not. Gretzen had barely stopped a hunter’s killing hand and taken the pup as her own. It was the runt of the litter and was no good as a future sled wolf. Gretzen found it fitting that Talon should raise the runt, and when she presented the pup to him, the boy had smiled for the first time in a season.
He named the pup Chief, and they became fast friends. His amma refused to feed Chief, and so Talon was forced to hunt for food with him. The wolf pup went everywhere with him; be it hunting, lessons, exploring, or to market, the two were inseparable. Chief became a light in Talon’s dark world and warmth through the cold. Having a wolf also gave Talon a bit of a reprieve from the daily beatings.
Talon had dreaded his fifteenth birthday because he was one year closer to sixteen, when he would become a man, and stand for Miotvidr. All barbarians stood for measure at the age of sixteen; if by then their heads did not reach the Miotvidr stick, they were cast away to live the life of a Skomm.
Skomm, sometimes called Draugr and Throwbacks, had been the barbarian slave class for centuries, ever since the barbarians’ banishment from Agora. The Skomm were shunned at birth for their deformities, size, or sickness, and sent to live with the other Throwbacks, far away from the villages. They were not permitted to marry or have children upon pain of death, nor could they ever use their family names. The dominant Vald never called a Skomm by name, unless it was one of a derogatory nature. In the days before the barbarians were cast from northern Agora by the hated Agorans and Ky’Dren Dwarves, the Skomm would have been cast over a sacred cliff to be judged by the barbarian god of strength, Styrkr; if their spirits were deemed worthy, they would be born again into a stronger body. When the barbarians were driven from Agora to the frozen island of Volnoss, their numbers had been dangerously thinned, and they began to allow the Skomm to live.
Many of the Skomm females were sold to the Agoran slavers, along with the larger of the men. Otherwise they lived a life of servitude to the Vald, and their masters were far from kind. Many of the Skomm they worked to death by the age of thirty.
Talon’s father had insisted he be cast away at birth, knowing that he would never grow to be a Vald. But Gretzen insisted that he live as a Vald until the day of his Miotvidr. Talon learned this at an early age, and to his disappointment it became clearer every year that he would never grow to be the size of a Vald. The measure for men of age sixteen was seven feet tall. He had only one year to grow over two feet, and he knew as well as everyone else that he would not. The older he got and the more apparent it became, the more the taunting and teasing increased.
Talon often went out with Chief late at night and snuck to the western outskirts of Skomm Village. The village was located far from the Vald, and much of it was built on barren, rocky land. The Skomm walked to the Vald villages every day to tend the crops, though they could grow no crops of their own. At night most of them returned home hungry.
Talon had been sneaking out and watching them since he was ten years old. He was surprised to discover that they acted so lively around one another, almost normal. In the Vald villages, the Skomm walked with eyes always on the ground and a slight hunch to their backs, as if they expected to be throttled any moment for everything they did. And rightly so: a Vald could beat or kill any Skomm they wanted with no repercussions. But in Skomm Village, Talon found a cheerful, quick-to-smile people who told stories around the fires and sang strange songs full of harmony, unlike the Valds’ grizzly voices and sharp pronunciations. Softness of voice and song was not received well in the Vald villages, but here melody filled the nights and rose up into the heavens with the glowing ashes of many fires. The Skomm were not permitted to get married or have children, but what Talon saw of their villages was closer to family than he had ever seen.
One night, a few weeks after his fifteenth birthday, Talon sat huddled low, watching Skomm Village as he often did.
“Maybe being a Throwback won’t be so bad,” he said. Chief looked at him the way curious puppies do.
A cry echoed from the village and Chief gave a yip.
“Shh, pup,” Talon warned him, and he ducked down lower behind the bushy patch of frozen, brown grass that concealed him on the ridge. Two Vald dragged a Skomm woman from her mud and grass hut by the ankles. She clung to a crying infant in her arms and kicked helplessly against the towering Vald. One carried a heavy club in his hand, and the other a whip. The Vald with the club grabbed her by the hair and dragged her toward the bonfire at the outskirts of the village.
“All right, then, you stinking Draugr, which one of you is the father of this miserable Throwback?” he yelled at them all.
Silent moments passed and Talon found himself ducking lower. None of the cowering Skomm stepped forward. The big Vald threw his club into the snow and ripped the crying infant from the frantic woman’s grasp as the other took her by the hair.
“No, not my bab…” The Vald silenced her with a punch to the face. Her left arm twitched in midair as she reached for her child.
Talon watched, horrified, as the big Vald carried the baby around by its tiny leg. A commotion began in the crowd, screams of “let me go!” were countered by “they will kill you!”
A short, young man broke through the crowd with a scream of rage and rushed across the snow-covered earth with a shoddy spear leading the way. He meant to impale the man holding his child, but the barbarian slapped the spear away with his big club and kicked the man with a boot as big as his torso. The father made a painful, heaving sound as he was knocked back many feet. The smart crack of a whip rang out and Talon saw that it had wrapped around the father’s neck. He grabbed at it with both hands as he struggled for breath. With a snap of the wrist, the whip-wielding Vald broke the young man’s neck, dragged him through the snow, and threw his limp body on the bonfire.
Many from the crowd looked on with horror, if they looked at all. Even from his distance away from the raging fire, Talon could smell the nauseating stench of burnt flesh and hair. The Vald walked a slow circle around the fire, holding the crying baby aloft, his club held threateningly out to the side, slowly swinging back and forth. He regarded the Skomm with scorn. In the firelight the bone through his nose and intricate ritual scars upon his face made him look like a demon come to life.
“In the days of our For’Eldra your people was cast from the side of the mountain at birth. We, in our godly mercy, have allowed you to live, though you are weak, sickly, and diseased. We have few rules for you disgraceful Skomm,” he said, rounding on the crowd. “You are not to have children!”
The angry Vald swung hard with his big club and hit the woman in the back. Talon heard the echo of cracking bone and was sickened further. He could think of nothing but the baby. Why didn’t someone do something? Surely the dozens of peeking Skomm could overpower the giants.
“Then what?” his practical mind asked; to save the baby would be to kill hundreds. The Vald’s retaliation would be swift; it would be brutal. Only once had Talon heard of a Skomm killing a Vald. Two hundred were killed because of it.
Chief barked frantically as women in the crowd screamed for mercy for the baby. Talon scooped up Chief, covered his muzzle, and ran as fast as the snow would permit. Hot tears trailed down his cheeks as he ran away from what he knew was coming. The club would soon fall again. He yearned to cover his ears but he could not put Chief down; even against Talon’s clutching hand he tried to bark.
The sound came.
The steady thudding of the
big club followed him for many strides. At some point in his flight, the baby stopped crying. Talon cried and ran as the sound continued. Cries and screams mixed with the howling wind. He waited to hear the baby cry again, wishing for nothing more than the sound of that high keening.
The baby cried no more.
Chapter 2
Akkeri
The son the father refuse shall make father’s name known.
—Gretzen Spiritbone, 4975
Talon awoke the next morning to Chief licking his face. For a fleeting moment, he did not remember the horrors of the night before. Soon, however, the screams of the Skomm villagers came rushing back to him and he felt sick.
“Why had the woman decided to get pregnant?” Talon wondered. “Surely she knew what would happen.”
His sorrow told him he should stay in bed forever; nothing waited beyond the warmth of his amma’s tent but cold and death, but the threat of his amma’s rod roused him from bed. He threw on oversized furs that his amma had made him two years before. Talon had convinced Gretzen to make the coat and pants big, predicting he would soon grow into them; he never did.
Gretzen sat before the fire pit at the center of the long tent, stirring a steaming pot of gruel, wordlessly eyeing the puppy; Talon knew her mind. He picked up Chief and brought him outside to yellow the snow. The temperature remained cold enough to freeze standing water. Talon’s breath came in plumes and hung above him like fog. The wind was still. The day would be good for ice fishing.
Their tent stood on the outskirts of the village, farther from Sudroen Hall than anyone else. Gretzen liked it that way. Talon thought it had its advantages and disadvantages. They were far enough away from the heart of the village to have a relative amount of peace. But the distance meant he had to walk far to get anywhere, which increased his odds of being seen and receiving a beating just for looking someone in the eye. His amma told him to never divert his eyes from others, to never act like a cowardly Draugr. Her advice gained him numerous beatings from those who would see him bow.
He returned with Chief bounding ahead of him into the tent as though they raced. Talon sat down at the small table and began to eat the gruel Gretzen put in front of him. He hated gruel. He had eaten it every morning for as long as he remembered, and always his amma insisted on adding some “magic spice” that was sure to help him get bigger. The mysterious spices too oft turned out to be bitter-tasting, ground roots or disgusting leaves from gods knew what strange plant. Given that Talon hardly grew that year, he doubted his amma’s recipes worked, though he would never say as much out loud. He got enough beatings from the stupid bullies in the village, let alone his amma’s big hands getting ahold of him.
He ate his heaping, disgusting bowl of mush and washed the lump down with a pint of goat’s milk. His amma remained quiet all through breakfast. She became overly sullen every year during the months after his birthday—the anniversary of the day she had lost her daughter.
Talon put on his boots and grabbed his fishing line, skinning knife, three crooked hooks, a sack of old crusty bread ends, and his ice pick and hammer. He left Gretzen to her ponderings and headed south to the stretch of shoreline he had found to be oft deserted. Due to the spot’s rocky shoreline full of snags and catches, no one bothered with it. His special fishing spot was a place where he was free from the constant taunting and teasing, somewhere he could dream of being far from Volnoss. Shierdon’s huge vessels often sailed past in the warmer months when the ice flows did not crowd the channel between Volnoss and Shierdon.
Chief scampered along after Talon, letting his boots clear a path through the snow. The wolf understood that the long fishing stick meant going out on the ice; also, if they had any luck, he might get the treat of a fish head or two. Talon did not share his enthusiasm, however. His mind kept drifting to the village the night before, to the cries of the baby. He found himself looking in the direction of Skomm village more often than the trail ahead. At some point in his travels, he changed direction and turned from the coast to the ridge of thick trees, through the small forest and across a windblown field of thin saplings and proud evergreens, all the while wondering why he went. Chief barked angrily behind him as he suffered to keep up, and Talon realized he had begun to run.
“Sorry, Chief,” he said as they had come to the outskirts of the village.
With his head down, he slunk along a line of evergreens and crouched into his position on the ridge. The mood of the village reflected his own. People sulked about as they did when they worked in the Vald villages. A silent sadness permeated the still air above the village where the smoke of many fires hung motionless. The bonfire that had raged the night before had since burned out. Talon couldn’t help but search for the bones of the poor father in those gray ashes. Likely they had been collected and buried along with the man’s tools, a custom of both the Vald and the Skomm. He found no sign of a burial, and noticed Chief looking intently to their right. He followed the puppy’s gaze and noticed a girl standing across the snow-covered field with shoulders hunched and head bowed. Her tattered cloak hung heavily about her shoulders. A patchy, brown skirt ended at her knees, where it met tall fur boots bound in leather straps.
Talon was drawn to the girl, knowing she had been somehow affected by the atrocities of the night before. The entire village had surely been affected by the violence, but the girl being alone in the field suggested to him that perhaps one of the tragic lovers had been her friend. He guessed that she had insisted on being alone with her sorrow. Yet he walked across the field toward her, pulled along by some inexplicable force.
When she heard the crunch of snow beneath his boots, she whirled around angrily.
“I said I wanted to be al…oh,” she stammered, blinking at him, searching for recognition. What was it he wanted to say to her? He didn’t remember. What should he say? He had no idea.
He must have seemed ridiculous, his facial expressions moving with his thoughts. The snowy world became quite hot suddenly, and Talon wanted nothing more than to take off his heavy, oversized coat. He realized with dread that he had never really talked to a girl, aside from occasional dealings at market. The Vald girls his age wanted nothing to do with him. Their mothers groomed them to land husbands big and strong. The only looks he got from girls his age were those of disdain, scorn, and disgust.
“I’m s-sorry for your loss,” he said to her finally.
Chief whimpered at their feet and the girl glanced down at him. Her face lit up and Talon’s heart soared. She bent down to pick him up, causing curly red locks to spill from beneath her fur hood. Chief smothered her face in puppy kisses, and she laughed despite the tears streaking her face.
“Thank you,” she said with a smile.
When he gazed upon the fiery-haired girl’s smile, strange things began to happen to his body. His heart fluttered like the wings of a hummingbird, his legs turned to blubber, and his head swam as if he were drunk; he feared he might throw-up—and he loved it.
“You’re welcome,” he said. The heat of his cheeks threatened to melt the lazily falling snow.
“Which Skomm village are you from?” she asked, absently petting Chief.
“I…uh, I am Timber Wolf Vald,” he said embarrassed. She had assumed he was also a Throwback, and who could blame her? He was barely as tall as her.
“Oh…,” she began, and some of the affability left her.
“Until next year, anyway,” he quickly added. “Unless I grow two feet by then, I’ll never pass the Miotvidr.”
The girl’s eyes wandered to the village behind Talon as he spoke, and he knew he had ruined things by naming himself Vald. A shadow of suspicion crossed her face at the title; she likely wanted nothing to do with him.
“I must go,” she said, putting Chief down. Before Talon could say anything, she brushed past him and trudged quickly through the snow back to the village.
“What’s your name?” he called after her, thinking himself an idiot even as the words left
his mouth. The question hovered in the lightly falling snow as she continued on, and he sighed a long, pent-up breath. But then she stopped abruptly and turned back.
“Akkeri,” she yelled across the distance.
She turned once again and Talon yelled after her, “I am Talon!”
She gave no reply or indication she had heard him but kept on through the snow. Talon remained frozen in place as his eyes followed her until she passed by one of the huts and disappeared into the village.
Chief wagged his little tail frantically, causing it to thump, thump, thump against his leg. In his mouth he held a long red ribbon—her ribbon. Talon was careful to extract the thin ribbon from the puppy’s mouth without fraying the delicate fabric. He thought to go after her to return the ribbon but decided against it. He was still Vald after all, and he didn’t think he would be welcome in the village this day.
“Akkeri,” he said to Chief as he caressed the soft ribbon that had held those long, red locks.
“Akkeri,” he repeated to himself many times as he left the field next to the Skomm village. The name rolled off his tongue like music.
“Maybe being a Throwback won’t be so bad after all,” he said to Chief.
Chapter 3
Miotvidr
By what measure can the heart be judged?
—Gretzen Spiritbone, 4996
Regardless of his amma’s herbal concoctions, Talon grew only three inches the following year. As the day of his Miotvidr drew closer, he began to accept the reality that he was a Skomm and always had been. The rest of his life he would live as a slave to the spiteful Vald. When his spirits were at their lowest, his amma tried to cheer him up with her stories about his stars and with promises that his destiny held a wondrous future. He would have liked to believe her but he knew better. His father had been right. He was a Skomm—shameful. A few hundred years ago, he would have been tossed from a cliff at birth.
Talon: The Windwalker Archive (Book 1) Page 2