by Jesse Teller
She turned her body away and felt a thick cloak drop down around her. The cloak was worn and woolen. It smelled of oil and wilderness, and it was heavy. She looked up, seeing her papa had put it on her, and she pulled it around her body. She stood brave before her aunt and spat the floor.
“You may be too weak to stop them, but I will not be, I will—” Rachel began, but her mother stopped her.
“You will go with your papa and live with the Ragoth.”
“You want me to live with the men? You want me to be a wife?” Rachel felt as if the very floor had been pulled out from beneath her.
When her mother reached out for her hand, Rachel gripped it. She fought to pull her close and Rachel climbed onto the bed.
“Your papa is the strongest man I ever met. He is kind and ravenous, and the mightiest warrior to ever stand before me. He will not let anyone break you or harm you. He will help you grow strong. He will protect your pride, and he will teach you to never let any man oppress you. He has a Fury’s respect for women, and he has a Fury’s love of war. He is the best I can give you. I have too many powerful enemies. Some in this very room,” her mother whispered. Rachel looked up at her aunt and back at her mother.
“Kiss me one more time,” her mother said.
Rachel kissed her cheek, tasting foul sweat.
“No, girl, kiss me like a warrior. Kiss me like a Fury,” Jolonyst said.
Rachel kissed her mother fiercely and long, and in the middle of the kiss, she felt her mother die.
Rachel pulled back and wiped her mouth. Her papa sobbed one time before he growled. He gripped Rachel’s shoulders and moved her behind him.
“She is dead,” her aunt said. “Your welcome has run dry. Take this foul girl and run for your lives.” Her aunt stepped forward, pulling her daggers. “Gerber Beastscowl will die if he is not out of this nation by nightfall. His runt of a daughter will die a wasting death.”
She stepped closer, her face screwed up in wrath. She looked a viper poised to strike, before the man with the shield stepped in her way. Her aunt hissed but did not attack.
Rachel’s papa looked at her.
“Turn your eyes. I do not want you to see this,” he said.
She refused. She glared at him as he pulled a dagger and climbed onto the bed. He pulled back the covers to expose her mother’s reeking wreck of a body, and with one forceful thrust, punctured the chest. Rachel screamed as he sawed through her mother and severed every strand of tissue holding her heart. Gerber stuffed the heart in a bag on his hip, then turned and offered a bloody hand to his daughter.
“Sorrow will wait. Now for the fight. Are you ready, or have I misjudged you?” She gripped his gore-drenched hand and squeezed. She felt her mother’s bloody tissue squelch in her grip, and she gritted her teeth.
“I’m ready, papa.”
“Breathos, I hand you now my joy,” Gerber said. He hefted Rachel in his arms and handed her to the shield-bearing man. She twisted in his grip, fighting to get to her feet, but he wrapped the cloak of her papa around her and hugged her close to his chest. He brought his shield around before him, and the solid metal cradled her tight.
“Take that little beast from this village and never bring her back,” her aunt hissed.
Rachel was too angry to be hurt by the words. Breathos stepped out of the house and onto the porch. Rachel gripped the top edge of the shield, peering over it at the village before her. Every Fury warrior stood, bows in hand, faces curled like fists. Her aunt shoved her way down the stairs to turn and glare at the men still standing on them.
“Take her if you will have her, but if she ever returns, she will be whipped and defiled. She will be handed over to our males, to scrape and serve. This,” her aunt took Rachel’s bow when it was handed to her, and she held it up like a trophy. “This thing right here is worthless and weak.” With a savage snap over her knee, her aunt broke Rachel’s bow in half. She tossed it to the ground and stepped upon it.
Rachel screamed. She screamed in horror, and she screamed in wrath. She felt her bladder loose, and sobbed. The world blurred with tears as she trembled in abject grief.
“If this weak little girl ever touches a bow again, she will be killed. A Fury will find her and slaughter her. If she so much as lays one of her foul fingers on a bow again, we will bite it off!” her aunt yelled. “Do you understand?”
“Call her foul again,” Ruggamon said. “I need to hear it one more time, for if I do, I will break free of this place. I have a Beastscowl, a Black Hand, a Steeltooth, a Stonefist, a Clay and a Redfist. I am a Flurryfist. I have six Sons of the Seven with me. No matter what you put in front of us, we will pound through it. Call her another false word, and I will fight my way free of this place, and I will bring back the Ragoth nation, the Fendis nation, and all the armies of Tergor. I will march into this land and I will pulverize it with this fist.” He waved a curled fist at her aunt. “The combined armies I have described will gut this entire nation and leave it as one bloody stain that once held proud warriors.
“I am an agent of peace. I was sent here by my brother to stave off the fires of war. I was sent here to stop blood from flowing. But I am a Flurryfist, and I have their temper. I know rage, quite like the rage that beats in your heart, and I will come back here and burn this entire nation to the ground if you say one more terrible thing to this proud girl.”
“You know no wrath or rage like that of a Fury warrior.” Her aunt spit.
Ruggamon descended the steps. As he walked them, not even the wind dare stir. The warriors behind him and the warriors before him held their breath. He stopped before her aunt, and looked up at her.
“I invite you to test me,” he said. “Show me your rage and I will show you mine. We will see whose fire consumes the mountain.”
He was young. Not even as tall as her aunt. He could not have been much older than twelve. But when her aunt looked into his face, she paled.
“Get out of my path or I will move you,” Ruggamon said.
The Fury nation pulled back.
“Men?” Ruggamon said. He broke out into a run and all the men ran with him. She felt the man she was carried by cradle her tight as he picked up his pace and settled into a sprint. She felt as if a wall ran before her. Felt the very strength of the mountain curled around her, and as she peered out over the lip of the shield, as the men stole her from her homeland, something within Rachel Beastscowl died.
They ran all day and into the night at paces that humbled her. It seemed these men were not acquainted with exhaustion. They kept their pace high and crossed the land as if fired from a bow. They moved through forest. They moved through valley. They waded through rivers, and through it all, they ran. When night came for them, they dropped into a quick walk and moved through the mountain slowly.
“I doubted you,” her papa said. He turned to Ruggamon and grabbed the boy by the shoulder. “I doubted you, and it has dishonored me. I beg forgiveness and a way to repair my honor.”
“One I give readily, the other I do not need. Your honor is great, mighty Beastscowl. To doubt a man is not a dishonor. To refuse to allow himself to prove you wrong is.” Ruggamon slapped her papa on the back and smiled. “We will make it to Ragoth land by the end of the night. We will—”
They all froze at once. The man with the shield yelled first.
“Run!” he screamed, and all of them broke off into a sprint.
“No one dies,” Ruggamon said. “We will leave this land how we found it. No killing strikes. No death. Come men, run with me. Run for peace. Run for honor. Run beside me through Hell.”
The Fury nation sprouted up around them and arrows began to fly.
The men dodged and ducked behind boulders and trees. The man that held her shoved her head below the lip of the shield, and within a breath, she heard a terrible ringing of metal. An impact shook her very bones, and she heard wood shatter to bits. She held back her cry, unwilling to let fear master her, unwilling to beg, or even ask f
or safety.
“Let me down. I will fight them,” she said, as she shoved her legs against his body and her back against the inside of the shield. She shoved and kicked as hard as she could, but could not budge him. It was as if she were vying against the very stone of the land itself. She reached down and found his hip. She felt a dagger and grabbed it.
“Let me down! I am a fighter!” She screamed, but he would not let her go. She stabbed him in the chest and in the abdomen. She screamed as she slashed his body and stabbed at the hand holding her. If she cut him, he showed no sign. She shoved the dagger up through the gap formed between his chest and the shield, aiming for his chin, but as the blade reached the lip of the shield, it was pried from her grip.
She screamed as more and more impacts slammed into the shield, and she realized they were aiming at it. They were trying to punch through it and hit her. Her nation was trying to kill her. All the fight was sapped from her, and she sagged in his body, feeling the cloak around her fill with his blood.
*******
They rushed out of Fury land and into Ragoth. There was no marker, but she knew. She could feel her body leave her nation, and she thought she would die of it. They dropped to a walk, but Ruggamon was not satisfied. Her papa and Ruggamon left the group to go into a small village. She sat in her protector’s arms, still covered in his blood, and waited. He would not set her down. He held her as easily as if he was holding a mug, and did not shake from exhaustion or let her sag at all.
She pushed her way to the lip of the shield and peered out for a while at the men sitting around her. They looked tired. They looked spent. She stared up at the man who held her and saw no sign of weariness at all. She looked him in the eye and snarled.
“I will not apologize,” she said.
“I would never hear of it. No Beastscowl need ever apologize to me for being a Beastscowl.”
She did not like him.
“You should have set me down,” she said.
“Would you have held back as Ruggamon said, or would you have attacked and killed your enemy? If those warrior women back there had gotten their hands on you, could you have stopped yourself from killing them?”
She liked him a little.
“To kill an enemy is acceptable to save your life,” she said.
“Not this time,” he said. “If one of those warriors had been killed, the Fury nation would have gone to war against the Ragoth. As it is, we can hammer out peace and stop the worst, but if we had killed even one of them, the mountain would bleed. If I had let you down, it is my belief you would have killed a Fury warrior. I could not allow that. I was not protecting you by holding you back. I do not think you need protection. I was protecting my people.”
Rachel stared at him. She grabbed him by the sides of the face, looking into his eyes.
“Are you a warrior among your people?” she asked. She was almost sure she knew the answer, but had to be careful.
“I am. My name is Breathos Steeltooth.”
She kissed his lips one time, slow and deliberate. “I recognize you as a warrior and introduce myself as one.” She was almost sure that was how it went.
Breathos nodded solemnly to her and looked her in the eye. “I am honored.”
“You can put me down now,” she said. “I can walk from here.”
He smiled. “It is the greatest honor of my life carrying you like this. I beg you let me carry you a little farther. Just to my house. For my sake and the sake of this shield. This is the very reason it was created.”
She smiled. “I will allow it.”
“Thank you, princess,” he said.
She turned away, because she had never heard a person call her that before.
When Ruggamon came back, he returned with over six hundred people. They were greeted and men wept. They were greeted and women kissed their hands and weapons. They were greeted and the people begged them to stay one night. Her papa nodded to Ruggamon, who agreed.
Papa took her away from the crowd, which she was grateful for. He took her out into the woods, leaving his spear with the redheaded man, and carried with him a great chopping axe.
“Gather wood,” he said.
“You will not order me around, Beastscowl,” she snapped. “I am a warrior.”
“You are a member of my nation, a member of my family. You will obey me when I command you. I am your papa. I am the man who puts food in your stomach and protects you. You will obey me, if for no other reason than I carry the spear of our fathers. I am Gerber Beastscowl, son of Etamaz. I am the bastay of Yenna Redfist. When I speak, men take heed. When I speak, the mighty obey.”
She sat down.
“I am the daughter of the Nyst. I am the daughter of the mightiest warrior on the mountain. I will not be ordered about by some man who has been told by other men he is important. Why do I listen to you when I am a warrior myself and you are not my ruler?”
“You obey me because your mother placed you under my care. You obey me because I am the patron of your line and you obey me because I have been carrying the heart of the only woman I ever loved for days now, and I wish to build a pyre for her and send her to her afterlife. You will obey me out of respect for your mother, or I will beat you bloody.”
His words took the breath from her chest. She saw her mother again, dead in her bed. She felt her mother’s death in her lips, and wept. She hated the tears, cursed them, told herself she would never cry again, then curled her hands into fists and smeared her tears away.
“I loved your mother. Now that she is dead, the only woman I will ever love again is my daughter. My only love will be you. You are walking from your home, where women ruled with viciousness and violence, to a place where men rule with iron and steel. Your bow has been taken from you, and you have lost your mother. The path you walk now is a hard and bitter one. Your brothers and I will see you through the worst of it. I will raise you to be more than any man can handle. You are a princess, daughter of a queen, and I will treat you like one. But I am your papa, and you will obey me. I have a rule for you. I will not tell it now, but I have chosen one pure rule you must follow for the rest of your life. It is a single choice I have made for you, and I will not tolerate you defiling it. After that rule, you are free to live in any way you see fit.”
“Name your rule,” she said.
“First, your mother,” he said. “Then I will give you the law of the Beastscowl name, the one law we all live by. I will embrace you as one of us, and you will live as Ragoth nobility. First, we must see to your mother.”
She gathered the wood her papa asked her to. He chopped a few trees down, and with the branches and logs, constructed a massive pyre. It stood over thirteen feet tall. It stretched twelve feet long and eight feet wide. He climbed the pyre and placed her mother’s heart on the center of it.
“An arrow lit with fire sparks the pyre of the Fury people. If you wish to make a bow and fire that arrow, I will allow it,” he said.
She felt a wicked thrust of fear and shook her head. She saw her aunt’s face, snarled and horrid, warning her against ever touching a bow again. She knew she was wrong to fear her, knew she had to fight the fear, but the thought of making a bow, of holding a bow, or even laying a finger to a bow, struck her dumb with fear. When she shook her head, Gerber nodded.
“The torch then,” he said. He lit a fire, pulled a brand from it, and handed it to her. She felt a thrill while holding the flame, and he looked at her and nodded. “You will light it. Then we will both say goodbye.”
Rachel walked to the small alcove in the pyre that had been made and stuffed the torch in. She watched it smoke, then a fire caught. She backed away as the fire climbed and began to rage.
“She deserved the whole world be lit to flame as her pyre. This modest pile is the best I can do for her,” he said. “Your mother loved me the best she could. But she was a Fury, and I, a Ragoth Son of the Seven. We never could have lived a life together. We decided we would see each other once a ye
ar. One week out of the year we spent together. When she gave birth to a son, she would give him to me. A daughter would be raised by her.” Gerber stared into the smoke, tears running down his face, and he gritted his teeth. “I have no use for my heart but to love my family now. I wish I could cut it out and toss it to burn with hers.” He patted Rachel on the head and smiled. “Say your goodbyes.”
She dropped from the rock they stood on, and she neared the flames. If he wanted to pull her back, he fought the urge off. She walked as close as she could. She neared the fire until she could see nothing but smoke, and her entire body broke out into sweat. She held her hands out to the fire, feeling her fingers sear.
“They will not break me,” she said. Tears coursed down her face, but the smoke had brought them. “I will not let a man have me. No man will be mighty enough to take my heart, or my body. Any that try will be beaten and humiliated. This man you loved is a beast. I will not suffer under him for long. This land you have sent me to is foul. I will not suffer it long. I will go back to my homeland one day, and with iron fist, wrench it away from your enemies. I will do what you couldn’t. I will kill them all. The only lives I leave will be those that mourned you. I vow it. I swear it.”
She turned and stomped out of the smoke. Her fingers were tender to the touch. Her arms, red and bloated. She felt as if she had burned away every ounce of hope she possessed, every weak spot in her body. She looked up at the man who would try to call her Ragoth, and sneered at him.
“Give me this Law of Beasts,” she snapped.
“You will respect and treat with honor the seven noble families. Loyalty is due to the Seven, and it will be paid by you. The names Beastscowl, Black Hand, Stonefist, Flurryfist, Fendis, Steeltooth, and Redfist will be held in high regard. Foul those names, and you will invite my wrath. They are the very soul of this nation. They are what keeps this nation whole. If you disrespect them, you are disrespecting the people. If you treat them well, you honor the whole of the nation.”