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

by Jacob Peppers

  It was not comfortable, that rest, for he could feel the man waiting on him, and though he did not look at Matt, but behind them, as he always did when they stopped, he could feel the man’s gaze on him anyway, judging him, thinking him weak. And the worst was that Matt felt weak, weak and afraid and no more than a child. Hard to believe that only yesterday he and Felmer and his friends had been talking about joining the soldiers. Children pretending to be adults and doing a terrible job, fooling themselves and no one else, all of them wanting to show the other, to show themselves how tough they were, how brave.

  But if the last day and a half had taught Matt anything, it was that he was not tough, he was not brave. Cutter was tough, brave, too, but Matt was not like him, could never be like him. The man seemed scared of nothing, moved by nothing, and Matt was scared of everything. He had nothing in common with such a man, no matter how much he wanted to. “You can fight,” Matt said, suddenly overcome with an idea.

  Cutter glanced up from where he’d been studying his hands as if trying to divine some secret there. He said nothing, only watched Matt, watched him with something that might have been dread hidden in his pale, icy gaze. Or, just as likely, it was nothing.

  “I mean, you know how,” Matt said, suddenly uncomfortable under that stare.

  “Everything that breathes knows how. Men more than most.”

  Matt winced. “That’s not…what I mean is you’ve been trained.”

  Again, the man said nothing, only watching him, waiting for what he would say, and Matt shifted, uncomfortable under that scrutiny. “I mean…you could train me. To fight.”

  “No.”

  A single word, but spoken roughly, nearly in a growl, and Matt found himself offended by the man’s quick refusal. “No?”

  Cutter said nothing, and dangerous man or not, Matt was angry. “Damn you then,” he hissed. “Damn you for everything. I hate you.”

  The man did not snap back, as Matt almost wished he would, did not retort or argue or even threaten. He only stood, watching Matt and weathering his words and his anger the same way he had weathered the travails of the last day and a half—in expressionless silence.

  “Damnit say something!” Matt yelled, hating the way his voice cracked.

  “What would you have me say?” Cutter asked quietly, in a voice that was far more terrifying than it would have been if he’d raised it in anger. “You’re not a fighter, boy, that’s all. Sure, I could teach you enough that you probably wouldn’t stab yourself, but even if I wanted to—and I don’t—we don’t have the time. You’re not a killer, that’s all. There’s nothing to be ashamed about—most people aren’t.”

  “You don’t know what I am or where I come from!” Matt shouted. “No one does. Not even—"

  Suddenly, Cutter spun to look into the distance from where they’d come.

  “What? What i—”

  “Quiet,” the man growled, holding up his hand for silence.

  “Don’t tell me to be silent,” Matt said, not ready to let it go, “not after—”

  “Shut your fucking mouth, boy,” the big man growled, and Matt did, his jaw snapping shut. “Shut up and listen.”

  Matt did, but he could hear nothing. “What is it? I don’t—”

  But Matt forgot what he’d been about to say as suddenly the blinding snow that had continued since they’d set off that morning stopped as if it had never been. Matt had lived his entire life in the frigid temperatures in and around Brighton, and he had never before seen a snowstorm stop so abruptly and so completely. One moment, the air was covered in thick flakes, so many that you could barely see in front of your face. The next, the snow was gone, and there was no noise at all, only a deathly silence that, for reasons he could not explain, made the hairs on the back of his next stand up.

  “We’re here.”

  Suddenly Cutter turned and started off in the direction they’d been traveling. Matt followed his gaze then froze, his breath catching in his throat. He had been able to see nothing during the blizzard, nothing at all except the falling snow. Only moments ago, he had despaired that he would ever see anything else, had wished to finally reach the Black Woods as they, however bad they were, could never approach the terribleness of the featureless white landscape. But gods, how he had been wrong.

  The woods lay in front of them, no more than thirty feet away, and even with the snow that had been falling, Matt could not imagine how they’d gotten so close without him seeing any sign of them, would have bet any amount of coin that the woods were still a great distance away, out of sight. But there they were, close, and he felt as if someone—or something—had been creeping up on him, felt that same feeling that sometimes overcame a man, that he was being watched, even though he knew there was no one else in the room with him.

  Somehow, though he knew he stared at the woods, he found it difficult, despite the closeness, to make out individual trees. Instead, what he saw was a terrible black smear across the landscape, as if an artist, having completed his work and found himself displeased, dipped his thumb into the black paint and dragged it angrily across the canvas.

  “Fire and salt,” he breathed, “it’s…it’s terrible.”

  Cutter followed his gaze, staring at the woods the way a man might gaze upon a familiar—and unliked—visitor suddenly arriving on his doorstep. “Yes. The Woods have always been an important place to the Fey, a sacred place. They are the heart of their power. It is the only reason, many believe, why they signed the treaty in the first place, sacrificing so much of their lands to at least preserve the Black Woods. Though, of course, they do not call it that. That is a name we chose for it.”

  “You sound as if you think they’re the good guys,” Matt said, frowning. “But I’ve heard the stories, the things the Fey do. They’re evil.”

  Cutter shrugged. “Perhaps. But then all things act according to their nature, even men. The Fey would not think of themselves as evil just as men do not—they are simply different than we are. As different from us as we are from the trees or the rocks. And know this—it was not the Fey who destroyed Brighton. It was men.”

  Matt snarled. He was angry, angry at his fake mother and fake father, at this man who had sold him as if he were just some commodity to be gotten rid of at a good price. “If you love them so much, why don’t you go and live with them?”

  Cutter spun on him quickly, a hard, cold look in his gaze, and Matt thought that he had gone too far after all, that the man would soon wrap those massive hands around his throat and choke the life out of him. Instead, he slowly turned back to stare at the Black Woods, at that dark smear across the landscape, and shook his head in what might have almost been sadness. “I would not be welcome.”

  “Why?” Matt said, his curiosity getting the better of his anger, at least for the moment. “What did you do?”

  The man was silent for a time and Matt was just beginning to think he wasn’t going to answer when he finally spoke. “What all beasts do,” he said in a voice barely loud enough to hear. “I acted according to my nature. Now, let’s go—there is another storm coming. A bad one.”

  Matt frowned up at the sky. He had lived in Brighton all his life and knew well the signs of a storm, had been taught from an early age, for more than one person—child and adult—had been lost to the storms over his lifetime, their bodies often found only a short distance away from the village, yet in the blinding snow they had been unable to make their way back to safety. None of those signs were present now. “I don’t see any sign. How do you know a storm’s coming?”

  Cutter grunted, settling the pack on his shoulder as he rose from where he’d knelt. “I always know.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Revenge is a sour drink and no surprise considering its ingredients.

  Hate and rage, pain and loss…how can it be anything else?

  Yet, as sour as it is, as bitter, there is one more truth to know—

  Men will never stop seeking it.

  —Ro
darian Dalumis, Poet, excerpt taken from “The Ramblings of Life from a Rambling Life”

  He sat atop his horse, a massive beast with flanks rippling with muscle, and which stood a foot taller than any of the other mounts standing nearby. The beast had been a gift, long ago, from the Fey king, a king who was now dead and gone, a beast born in a kingdom that hardly still existed and that, in large part, thanks to him.

  But it was not the magnificent beast beneath him of which he thought, not then. Now, as always, he thought of one thing and one thing only. Vengeance. He studied the scattered, broken bodies silently, his gauntleted hand flexing as if he might crush the object of his hatred in his grasp. He was not aware of this just as he was not aware—and would not have cared even if he had been—of the troubled looks his men shot him from a short distance away.

  “Sire.”

  Feledias Paterna, known as “Stormborn” to his men—thanks in part to the jagged birthmark, resembling a lightning bolt, which ran down one side of his face and, more recently, in part, to his temperament—turned to regard the scout. The man was covered in sweat, his dark pony-tailed hair lank with it despite the frigid temperatures this far north. He fidgeted anxiously in his saddle as Feledias watched him. “What?”

  “T-they’re gone, sir. These here, it seems, were his work.”

  No need to say who “he” was, for they all knew, no need for any of it, really, for any fool could see the man was gone just as any who had known him would have recognized the corpses and the attendant savagery as his work as clearly as any signature. And Feledias Paterna knew the man better than anyone else could have. After all, he was his brother. Or had been. Once.

  He was tempted, then, to draw his sword from its sheath at his side and make his displeasure and annoyance clear by lopping off the scout’s head, but he resisted the urge. Barely.

  After all, there were more important things to think about than some fool scout. He was close now, close to the vengeance he had sought for over fifteen years. The closest he had ever been.

  “It seems he flees to the Black Woods,” the scout finished, licking his lips anxiously, though whether that anxiety came from fear of his prince’s famous wrath or from the woods themselves was unclear.

  “Then we will follow him.”

  There was an uncomfortable rustling from the men at that. “Sir,” his second-in-command, Commander Malex, said, easing his horse forward and away from the two dozen others, “perhaps it’s unwise to…that is, he knows the forest. He has been there before. And according to the terms of the concord, we are not to set foot inside the Black Woods. Perhaps we could set pickets, wait him out, or—”

  “A coward’s course,” Feledias said, meeting his commander’s eyes. “If the beastmen and goblins do not like it, then their blood will be added to that of their kin which feeds the ground. But tell me, Malex, do you seek to deny your prince out of a child’s fear of bogeymen, or do you mean to deter me for another purpose? Do you work with him, Malex? Are you yet another traitor?”

  The commander was, if nothing else, a brave man, a man who had ridden with Feledias and his brother on many campaigns, but brave or not, he blanched at that, his face going pale around his steel-gray beard and moustache. “No, Your Highness. I am now, as always, your loyal servant. Surely you know as much, for I have ridden with you for many years and—”

  “You rode with him as well,” Feledias said, his eyes narrowing. Then, after a moment, his frown split into a wide smile, and he clapped the other man on one of his broad shoulders, a big man, Malex, with a back nearly twice as wide as Feledias’s own leaner frame. “Relax, Malex,” he said. “I only jest. I know well your loyalty, know and remember. Just as I know that your caution is only done out of love for me and not fear for yourself, nor loyalty to my brother. Isn’t that so?”

  The man looked genuinely hurt at that, his broad features scrunching up. “Of course, sire.”

  “Very well,” Feledias said, laughing. “And it is a love, a loyalty for which I am grateful. But now is not the time for caution, old friend. Now is the time for action. The time, as my brother was so fond of saying, for blood. Now come, ride with me, all of you. My brother’s execution has been a long time in coming—it is past time the sentence was carried out.”

  And with that, he rode toward the Black Woods, the hooves of his massive charger kicking up great tufts of snow behind him. Those others—near fifty in all—who rode atop their own horses were his honor guard, his most trusted and skilled warriors, men—and two women—who had sworn their lives to him. Yet they glanced at each other, their expressions troubled, before finally turning to their commander who gave a single, gruff nod.

  “You heard the prince—we go.”

  And so they did, fifty horses, fifty men, charging behind their ruler, seeking the blood of the man who had driven him to madness, all of them entertaining the thought—the hope—that perhaps, when the object of their ruler’s hatred was vanquished, perhaps their prince would be the man he once had been.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I had the misfortune on campaign to walk beneath those great trees

  Their branches dark, even in the light of day, seeming to reach for us

  I remember well the suffocating feeling of that place, the oppressive hatefulness that seemed to radiate from it

  I remember that just as I remember the sounds of the screams of those who wandered too far away

  For when a man—or men—enters the Black Woods, there is always a price

  A price those men paid that day.

  A price, the gods help me, that I pay still.

  —Balus Camin, veteran of the Fey Wars in interview with Exiled Historian to the Crown Petran Quinn

  Mortals had named the Black Woods, given it a title which brought so many negative connotations, but while it was perhaps unkind, it was also accurate. By the time they reached the nearest trees on the outskirts of the forest, the snow had begun to fall again, thicker and heavier than ever, and it was all Cutter could do to see the ground at his feet with each step he took.

  The temperature had dropped at least ten degrees in the last hour, and he felt the frost gathering on his eyelashes when he blinked, felt, too, his muscles beginning to grow cold and stiff despite their fast pace. He hesitated at the border, gazing about at the trees. This close, the air of menace they possessed had not vanished but instead had grown stronger, yet it was not the feeling in the present, not the present at all, in fact, which caused him to hesitate.

  Instead, it was the past, a past full of memories which he felt looming close, whispering in his ear. He remembered coming here the last time, a very different man than he was now, remembered laughing at the fear on the faces of his comrades just as he remembered, when he’d left, promising himself that he would never return. And not just himself, but many others. But if life had taught him anything it was that the world loved nothing more than to mock a man’s promises, particularly those promises he makes to himself.

  He stepped into the Black Woods.

  It was an easy thing, so very easy. But then, so was sticking your foot into a bear trap. It was always the getting out that presented a problem.

  After a time, he did not hear the boy’s footsteps behind him, nor his flagging breath, and he turned to see that he had stopped just inside the boundary of the forest and was now staring back at the snowy plain behind them. Already, the thickly-falling snow had obscured their footsteps completely, so that they might have never come at all.

  He knew well the feeling men had when entering the Black Woods, the abstract fear, as if they had just traveled down the gullet of some great beast, for he had seen that fear etched into the faces of his companions so many years ago. Had seen it, but had not felt it for himself, for the man he had been knew no fear, only hunger, no worry, only bloodlust. He walked back to where the lad stood.

  Here, beneath the boughs of the thick trees with their limbs which seemed to twist as they reached in all directions, as if me
aning to swallow the entire world, the curtain of falling snow had vanished, caught up above in the forest’s mantle. So then, he could see clearly the emotions twisting the boy’s features, a mixture of fear and grief and anger and finally, resignation.

  He said nothing as they stood there, for there was nothing he could say. He had never been good with words, had been good at very few things, in fact. Only the one. Finally, the boy turned to him. No tears in his eyes, as Cutter had expected, and he couldn’t decide if that were a good thing or not. He was growing, then, had grown much in the last two days and, unfortunately, the world had a way of shaping a man that was akin to a blacksmith shaping metal. Turning him into a weapon or into a useless scrap to be discarded as if of no use.

  The boy met his eyes then turned once more to stare at the frozen wilderness beyond the forest’s borders. Was it sadness in his eyes? Sadness for what he left behind? Or was it something else?

  “It…seems so far away,” the boy said.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s as if…as if it’s a world away.”

  In many ways, Cutter thought it was. After all, he had been here before, knew that the magic of the Fey was thickest here, in their sacred place, a place seemingly made to ensnare any who dared enter without invitation. A place where danger lurked around every corner and where a man could not trust the things he saw or heard, could not even trust that, should he turn to look behind him, the path on which he had trod would remain. When last Cutter had come, he had come with fifty other men, all brave, skilled warriors.

  In the end, though, it had only been him, his brother, Commander Malex, and less than half a dozen others who had stumbled out once more. The Black Woods took their price—that much of the stories, at least, he knew to be true. Still, telling the boy as much would do no good, would only frighten him more, so he grunted. “Come—the storm is growing worse. We must find shelter and soon, or we will die.”