A Warrior's Burden: Book One of Saga of the Known Lands

by Jacob Peppers

  Cutter shrugged, shifting his massive shoulders. “Some. I was the one who gave you to her.”

  The boy swallowed hard at that. “Gave me,” he repeated, the tears rolling their way down his cheeks now. “Like I’m a dog.”

  “Yes,” Cutter said. “And I paid her to take you in, to raise you.”

  The boy recoiled at that, wounded and hurt. Cutter did not like telling it, especially since that last part was a lie, but if he was to have any hope of saving the boy they had to get moving soon, and he couldn’t afford to knock him out or chase him down every time he took it in mind to play at being a hero. A lie, yes, but it would make the boy hate the woman who’d served as his mother, the woman who’d taken him in gladly, her husband too, not to be paid but out of kindness. A hate that was unfair, perhaps, but one that would make it easier to leave her and Brighton behind, to accept that they were already dead. Sometimes, Cutter had found, hate was the only way a man got on. Hate for others, sure, but more often, hate for himself.

  He could see both in the boy’s eyes then. “But…who am I?”

  Cutter shrugged again. “I don’t know, only a baby found in the road, abandoned.” Another lie, but one that was as close to the truth as he would come, as close to it as he dared come.

  “You mean…even my parents didn’t want me.”

  Cutter had never been good with compassion, with sympathy. There were those, Maeve among them, who had told him often that a boulder was softer, warmer than him, and he had never argued it, but there was no denying the hurt and pain in the boy’s eyes, the need to believe he had not been wantonly cast aside. “Perhaps they were set upon by bandits,” Cutter offered, hoping to give the youth a little peace, “or the Fey. There is no knowing.”

  “And you…took me,” the boy said. “Why?”

  Cutter did not answer that, only stared at the boy, watched the tears roll down his face, watched some part of him die as he began to accept the fact that the woman he’d known as his mother had not wanted him, that perhaps no one had. “They’re all dead, aren’t they?” the boy asked. “The folks in Brighton, I mean.”

  Cutter saw no point in lying. Sometimes, the truth was dark—most times, in fact—but it never did a man any good to ignore it. “Yes.”

  The lad’s mouth worked at that, twisting, and for a time Cutter thought he might burst into more tears. Instead, he nodded, his eyes growing cold, hard. “I wish I was. You should have left me.”

  “No,” Cutter said, and for the first time there was some emotion in his voice as the boy’s words cut at old wounds, old scars that had never healed, that could never heal. “Death is never something to be courted, boy. Do you understand? It comes for us all in the end—there is no reason to invite it in.”

  The boy had known him for years and stood in muted shock at the emotion in his words, an emotion he had never seen before in the normally stoic man he had come to admire. Finally, he cleared his throat, wiping an arm across his face furiously, ashamed of his tears, his grief, as only the young could be. The old, Cutter found, knew far too much of grief to be ashamed.

  “What…will they come after us?” the boy asked.

  “Yes. No doubt they are coming already. The blizzard should cover most of our tracks, but they will find them just the same, sooner or later.”

  “But why?” the boy demanded. “Why did they want to hurt the people of Brighton? Why hurt us?”

  “It is what they do,” Cutter said simply. There was more to it, of course, far more, but the truth of it sat behind a wall he had erected in his mind, one that had been long years in the making and that, despite his efforts, was threatening to crumble, laying bare the past and the pains it brought.

  “I hate them,” the lad said. “All of them.”

  “That’s alright, then,” Cutter said. “Sometimes, boy, hate is the only way a man gets on.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Saying nothing more about his mother or about the dead, the only people he had known his entire life, but that was not so unusual. It was the shock, that was all, a symptom common enough among those who had suffered a great tragedy, a great loss. Cutter knew that too, knew it better than most, for he had often been the cause of that loss, the reaper of that tragedy. “We continue west.”

  The boy’s eyes went wide at that, and he turned gazing off in the direction. The Black Woods were some distance now, blocked by a horizon filled with snow and that only, but he continued to stare as if he could see them—and perhaps, in his mind, he could. “You mean…”

  “Yes,” Cutter said. “We cannot outrun them, not for long. If we try, they will catch us.”

  “And if they catch us…” The lad didn’t finish, and Cutter said nothing, letting him come to the conclusion himself, for no truth was as powerful, no lesson as well-learned, as the one a man found on his own. “But the Black Woods…” the boy said finally, “it’s…it’s where the Fey live.”

  “Yes.”

  The boy swallowed hard, no doubt recounting a lifetime of stories about the cruelty of the Fey, the evilness of them, some true, many not. “But if these men, if they want us so badly, won’t they just…follow us?”

  The boy was clever, always had been. That, Cutter knew, he got from his mother, the real one. “They will not go so far as that,” he said with more conviction than he felt. In truth, there was no way of knowing, yet the Woods were their only chances of survival, so he didn’t bother telling the boy as it would have served no purpose, only fill him with fear when what was needed was cold, hard strength.

  “It will be dangerous, won’t it? Going into the Black Wood, I mean.”

  “Living is always dangerous,” Cutter said. “But it is the only chance. There is no other. Now come. It is past time we left.”

  They walked for hours, the snow falling around them in a muted blanket of white, the only sound that of their footsteps crunching beneath them and the boy’s rasping, tired breaths.

  In time, night fell heavy and as silent as the thickening snow around them, and the boy could walk no farther. He collapsed to the ground. Cutter stepped toward him, meaning to bring him to his feet, to tell him that they must go on, but as he had feared it might, the shock chose that moment to wear off, and the boy’s face twisted with grief. He did not give words to that grief, did not name it, but then he did not need to, for Cutter had seen it before, a hundred, thousand times, and he knew it as another man might know his best friend—or his worst enemy.

  A moment later, the boy buried his face in his hands and wept, shaking his head silently as if to deny the night’s events. But the truth could never completely be denied, no matter how much a man might wish it. So the boy continued to weep, looking for solace where there was none, and Cutter turned and stared back at the path they had taken, back toward the direction in which the village of Brighton had once stood—but, he did not doubt, stood no longer.

  The heavy snow had done much to obscure their footsteps, destroying any evidence that they had ever trod upon the surface of this white-blasted world, that they had ever existed at all. That’s all men were, he thought, in a rare moment of introspection, all men left behind them. Footprints, indentations which might be covered in a moment. It was a dark thought, but that did not change the fact that it was also a true one.

  Yet for all the snow’s efforts at hiding their passage, he knew that those men who had come upon the village of Brighton would find them, sooner or later. They would not rest until they had. After all, it was for Cutter that they had come. A man could never really outrun his past, not forever, for the past did not rest, did not sleep or drink or eat or laugh. It only trailed after, waiting to catch a man up when he was unaware.

  He had set a grueling pace for himself and the boy, as much as he had thought the lad capable of handling and then a little more, but he knew that despite his efforts, they could not hope to outrun those who came after them. Besides, the boy was done in—anyone with eyes to see could tell that much. Exhauste
d from the march, true, and from his own loss. “Rest.” Cutter told him, unslinging a bedroll from the pack at his back and tossing it to him. “Sleep and time are the best medicines.”

  “D-do they work?” the boy asked through his sobs.

  No. Cutter only stared at him though, saw the boy’s fragile eyes asking him for some words of comfort, of hope. But Cutter had never been good at lying.

  “But…but they’ll catch us. Won’t they?”

  “Sleep,” he said again. The boy, perhaps because of his shock or his loss, perhaps because he courted death whether he knew it or not, made no further argument. Instead, he took the bedroll and laid it out on the blanket of snow, climbing, shivering, inside.

  Cutter watched him, watched him close his eyes and turn his back toward him, toward the village of Brighton where his mother now lay dead, as if such a gesture might banish them from his life, from his thoughts. And, perhaps, it would. For a time. But the past, like a mongrel dog once fed, always returned, sooner or later.

  “Sleep,” Cutter said for the third time, and moments later, the boy did.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Blood in the snow.

  Is there anything more terrible?

  Is there anything more beautiful?

  —Unknown Poet

  It did not take him long to find them. They had made good time, as he’d known they would, and he caught sight of them less than two hours away from where the boy lay sleeping. Six in all, a forward scouting party which would be followed, he knew, by a much larger force. These six were meant to root out their quarry, to keep sight of them until the greater force arrived. It was the way it was done—that, he knew better than most, for it had been he who had decided it was so.

  He stood waiting for them in the snow, weaponless. The old him, the man he had once been, would have been offended that they had only sent six. That man would have been furious at the insult, would have been keen to display his rage on the bodies of those he felt had wronged him, would have rushed toward them to do just that.

  But Cutter was that man no longer, no longer the berserker warrior with a belly full of fire. He was not angry or furious, not eager at the bloodshed to come…he was only tired. That and nothing more. Not too tired to run, if he’d had a mind to, but he did not—was still, in that way, the same as the man he had once been. So he stood in the heavy-falling snow, watching the vague shapes of their forms approach. And he waited.

  Another several minutes passed, and they were about a hundred yards away before they became aware of him, a fact made apparent by the way they began to spread out, meaning to encircle him, to surround him and offer no means of escape. Not that he would try. The old him would have gripped his axe in anticipation as he watched, fanning the flames of his love of violence as he did, but Cutter had no axe, not any longer, had no love for violence any longer either, so he only stood and watched. And waited.

  They continued to spread out as they drew closer until they formed a circle, a circle of snow-covered specters. He could not see their faces, not yet, but he did not mind. Perhaps if he had, he might have recognized them, might have known them as men he had once shared a drink with, perhaps ones he had saved on one battlefield or another. But he did not see their faces, and he did not care.

  He would see them later, he knew, when he slept and the dreams came as they always did. Dreams in which a procession of the dead marched before him in endless number, all saying nothing, at least not with their mouths, but all watching him with dead, sightless eyes which nevertheless made their thoughts clear. It should have been you, those eyes said, you should have died, and the world would be better for it. And then, like now, he would only stand, saying nothing in return, for there was nothing he could say, no argument he could make—not when he believed them to be right.

  They drew their blades, those specters, and started toward him, the sound of their approach masked by the thick snow, so that everything was silent save for his own breath which plumed in front of him in the cold. He shifted, rolling his shoulders to loosen them and the frost which had gathered on the fur covering him cracked as he did. He flexed the fingers of his gloved hands, working what warmth he could into his numb body. He did not fear—that, then, was another thing he shared with the man he had once been. Perhaps he would die and perhaps he would not. If he prevailed, he would continue on with the boy into an uncertain future, and if he did not...well, perhaps that would be better, for the dead have no regrets, and they alone reside in a place where the past cannot follow.

  They approached in unison, warily, their blades held in front of them. Professionals, then, disciplined men who had done this before and who would likely do it again. Only, they would not. For while the men were soldiers, probably some of the best—after all, only the best would be tasked with such an errand as they now followed—he was not. He was a killer. Marching and holding lines, standing in a shield wall and following commands, these were the things at which soldiers excelled. Killers, though, had only the one talent.

  He remained still as they drew closer until they were only a few dozen feet away, spread out around him like the end-spokes of some great wheel, one which had turned since before his birth and would continue to turn long after he had faded to dust. They all hesitated, as if surprised to find him unmoving, then one of them motioned with his hand, a gesture just barely visible in the driving snow, and they started forward once more. Six men with six swords. But he did not fear. They, after all, were only men. He had faced far worse.

  He stood watching as the men crept closer, slowly, ever so slowly, for they would have been told who their target was, would know the lethality of the beast they’d been set to hunt. He remained still, watching them, watching until twenty feet turned to fifteen, until fifteen turned to ten.

  Then he moved.

  Poets and bards the world over often likened a warrior’s movements to wind or rain, smooth and graceful, and perhaps they were even right to do so. But Cutter was no warrior. He was a killer and a killer only, so he charged toward the nearest man who waved his sword in a defensive pattern. Truly a professional, one meaning to stall until his fellows arrived. But Cutter’s father had told him and his brother, long ago, before they had become the men they were, that when faced with a job to do, a man had best get it done. And so he did. Instead of allowing himself to be slowed by the man’s attacks, he charged directly into them, batting the sweeping blade away with a forearm covered in thick fur, fur which did much to keep the keen edge of the blade from his flesh. Much, but not all.

  He felt the kiss of steel along his forearm, but paid it no attention as he dove forward into the man, lifting him up with both hands by the front of his tunic and jerking him toward him even as his head lunged forward, crashing into the man’s face in a crimson shower of blood and teeth. He dropped the man—unconscious or dead—and lifted his sword in time for two more to be on him. The sword was not his weapon of choice, a weapon made for finesse and skill, and he wielded it with both hands, swinging it in vicious, deadly arcs that would have looked more at home on a lumberjack at his trade.

  The men were well-trained, and parried the way they should have, but no matter what stories they had heard of him, they were not ready for his strength, a strength which knocked the first soldier’s blade out of his hands and then powered his own sword as it cleaved deeply into the man’s face and forehead.

  The soldier screamed, but abruptly grew silent as Cutter ripped the blade free and, with a horizontal slash, lopped his head free of his shoulders. He let the hilt of his sword loose with one hand as he did, grabbing the headless corpse and spinning, interposing it between him and his other attacker just in time for the blade which had been darting at his back to stick into the corpse instead. Then he flung the impaled corpse into this new attacker, and both man and dead man were sent tumbling over.

  It would have been sporting, then, to let the man rise, to let him clamber his way free of his dead companion, but Cutter had never been a s
porting man, just as he had never been a soldier, and he brought the blade down in a two handed stab that pierced corpse and man alike before driving into the snow-laden ground and sticking deep into the earth. He left the man there, screaming, writhing, and turned to face the remaining three, weaponless once more.

  They hesitated, spread out in front of him, shocked, perhaps, by the violence which had occurred or maybe thinking of the best way to get at him. He didn’t give them time, for hesitation, he knew, got more men killed than anything else. He drove at the one on his left in a loping run. He could see the shock, the fright in the man’s eyes as the soldier raised his sword in front of him, not to attack, really, but only in an attempt to fend off the wild beast he had cornered.

  Cutter ducked under the attack, but not enough to avoid the steel kissing his back in a shallow cut. He ignored this wound as he had the first, bowling into the man with enough force to knock the air out of his opponent’s lungs, then lifted him up in the air before slamming him down on the ground. The snow was soft, but the man struck hard, and he was still stunned, trying to recover, when Cutter brought his boot down on his face. Once, twice, something crunching beneath it each time. On the third, the man stopped moving, his features all but unrecognizable.

  Footsteps behind him, and he spun in time to catch the wrist of this latest attacker before his sword could cleave into his collarbone where it had been aimed. With a growl and a savage twist, the man’s wrist snapped, and he screamed, dropping his sword. Cutter scooped it from the ground and brought it around in a two-handed arc that struck the man in the back of his knee then passed through it, severing his leg in half. The man’s screams turned to tortured wails as he fell to the ground, blood fountaining from the stump of his leg and staining the snow a crimson that was almost black in the moonlight.