by C. M. Hayden
“Is that how things are done around here?” Taro asked, struggling against the enormous men. “I call you a traitor, and you sic your dogs on me? I’d think the King of the North could answer a challenge himself.”
Mjolir shot a glare at Lokír. The king was practically frothing at the mouth. “Is this what you brought them here for? To challenge me?”
“Never, my king,” Lokír said.
“Liar!” Mjolir spat. “I’ve long suspected your duplicity, but now I have proof of it.”
Lokír knelt, placing his axe on the floor in front of him. “By my life’s blood, I swear to you, his words are not mine.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Taro shouted, still pulling against the guards. “I don’t speak for anyone but myself. Not the Endrans. Not your men. I’m Taro, son of Talthis, and I say you’re a traitor.”
The king waved the comment off, and the guards dragged him toward the door.
“And a coward!” Taro added.
The guards dropped Taro to the ground like he was a heavy stone. It addled his wits, and when he looked back at the throne, the king was walking toward him, removing his red overcoat and parts of his heavy leather armor. He reached out to Bjorn, who handed him a tremendously large axe with a spiked blade.
Taro scrambled to get Raethelas out of its sheath.
“Pick up that toothpick you call a sword,” Mjolir snarled, pointing the hundred-pound axe in his hands as if it were weightless. “You would come into my hall. Eat my food. Drink my wine. Then call me a coward? There can be only one answer to that.”
The men moved to the edges of the room, almost ritualistically. Lokír grabbed Kyra by the shoulders and yanked her back.
Taro had gotten the reaction he wanted. As Mjolir removed more of his clothing, exposing his bare chest, Taro saw that the old man was built like a tank. His frame was sturdy and muscular. His arms looked like cannons, and there was a rage in his eyes that was genuinely unsettling.
Templary would get Taro far, but even that wouldn’t stop an axe from going through his skull. Moreover, if he were to obviously use magic, that might have the opposite effect of what he was hoping for. It could be seen as cheating.
Taro threw his staff aside, and held Raethelas toward Mjolir. He felt his outstretched hand wobble slightly, but managed to steady himself. Of course, he’d learned how to wield a sword in the Magisterium. Magister Sullen, for all his faults, hadn’t neglected his combat education. But Taro had never been in a true one-on-one death match, not really, and Mjolir had no doubt been fighting his entire life.
Mjolir stomped his foot down, and gritted his teeth. “I’ll hang your skeleton from the Red Seat, and use that wooden leg of yours as a doorstop. There’s no blood right here, boy. I didn’t ascend to my throne by sitting on my ass.” He pointed his axe at the Red Throne. “I climbed to that throne over the bloody bones of my enemies.”
Taro assumed a combat stance: his legs wide, his sword angled in front of his face. The pain of his prosthetic melted away as adrenaline took over. He gave the king a sneer. “Are you going to talk, or are you going to fight?”
It was at that moment, as Taro watched the mountain of a man charging toward him like a mad bull, that he thought perhaps he’d taken this too far.
Chapter Twenty-two
A Matter of Honor
All the training in the world doesn't prepare you for a real, one-on-one fight to the death. Even knowing he had templary on his side, Taro couldn’t help but feel a tight fear in his chest as Mjolir dashed toward him with all the menace of a snarling grizzly bear.
Taro was accustomed to the occasional brawl during his years in Ashwick. The boys at Craiven & Boors might, at their worst, break a few ribs. Even at times when a fight escalated to using broken bottles or knives, they were mostly just scare tactics. Actually killing someone would’ve meant no more work from Mr. Boors, a terrifying prospect for boys who needed the protection and stability he offered.
Here, now, with Taro standing on one side, and Mjolir on the other, there were no protections. Mjolir wasn’t trying to wound Taro, or scare him—there was murder in his eyes.
Taro let Magister Sullen’s combat training take over, and tried to stay calm and rational. When Mjolir was a foot away, beads of sweat dripping down his hairy skin, he swung his axe like a farmer harvesting stalks of wheat. Taro tumbled out of the way, staggered to his feet, and put some distance between them.
He checked his prosthetic, and found that it was holding up despite the stress he’d been putting on it recently. He’d repaired the top strap four days prior, and it showed no signs of snapping again. Mjolir seemed frustrated that his swing missed, and came back around for another pass.
The Red King was too calm and collected. Taro needed to get him off his stride.
“Oi,” Taro said flippantly. “So old and slow that you can’t catch a cripple?”
Mjolir answered this by hurling his axe across the room. Taro moved just in time for it to miss his skull, and lodge itself into the back of a direwolf statue. Mjolir reached toward one of his men, who tossed him a sword. The bear-like king walked with seething deliberateness toward Taro, raising the sword up over his head and swinging it down with the force of a guillotine.
There was no dodging this one. Taro raised Raethelas up, and channeled his templar to soften the blow. Even with these precautions, Mjolir’s blade came down with such force that Taro thought every bone in his wrist had shattered. His knees buckled, and he fell back into a wooden chair, knocking it over. Mjolir didn’t let up for a moment, swinging and swiping, destroying chair legs as Taro scrambled to move out of his reach.
Somewhere, he heard Kyra pleading with Lokír to interceded.
“He’s going to kill him!” Kyra pleaded.
“That is the purpose of the challenge,” Lokír said. “We all heard the boy’s accusations. It’s a matter of honor now, and it must be answered as such.”
Mjolir’s sword struck the floor, sending up sparks and fragments of stone. His sheer strength amazed Taro. The Northmen didn’t have magic. Even with his size and immense build, his strength seemed oddly disproportional.
Taro gained some distance again, and continued his verbal taunting. “Did you sell out your people for power?” he said, sweating so hard that his shirt was drenched. “You’d ally with the woman who’s responsible for burning Firholt to the ground?”
Mjolir didn’t take the bait. He got in close, trying to trap Taro into a corner. Taro parried two blows, but the king managed to slice a huge gash across his shoulder. Taro felt a thin line of pain tear across his flesh, and he gritted his teeth against the burning. Blood poured out, turning his cream-colored shirt a dingy brown.
“The next one’s going through your lying throat,” Mjolir snarled.
Taro panted, holding his bleeding shoulder. Again, he continued to berate the man. “The dragons have let your people live on their land for centuries. They’re your friends. Your allies. Why betray them now?”
Something about Taro’s words seemed to affect him. Mjolir sneered. He panted, breathing heavily, and it seemed like words were buzzing around in his head.
Finally, he spoke, his voice thick with anger. “Allies? Sivion couldn’t care less about my people. We’ve grown soft and weak, languishing here. Our people were once conquerors, servants of Nuruthil. Now, look at us, driven to squalor. How dare you presume to know anything about us.”
“Nuruthil?” Taro said, his voice cracking with surprise. He was so shocked by the statement that he found himself utterly unprepared for Mjolir’s next move. The king stabbed forward with his sword, barely giving Taro time to react. Out of desperation, Taro played his trump card. He channeled every ounce of his templar into Raethelas.
“STOP!” he shouted.
The Deeplight shard pulsed, and every musc
le in Mjolir’s body clenched. The tip of Mjolir’s blade was less than an inch away from Taro’s chest when it froze, midair.
There was a moment of dead silence as the crowd around them took in what had happened. Mjolir halted dead in his tracks, and Taro had his back against the cracked direwolf statue. His chest heaved as he struggled to bring his frightened breathing under control. When he could, he staggered to a safer distance.
It was only now, as tired as he was, and trying to bend a three-hundred-pound mountain to his will, that he realized how much templar Raethelas required. Even now, he could feel every ounce of his spirit draining like water from a cracked glass. He couldn’t keep this up forever, and what was worse was that Mjolir was already beginning to resist Raethelas’ effects.
First, he moved his wrists. Then, his head. Soon, he was able to speak again.
“What is this devilry?” he asked, struggling against the power of the Deeplight. “Cowardice! Deception!”
“Sorry,” Taro said. “I’m not from around here. Wasn’t clear on the rules.” He waltzed to Mjolir, and slapped him on the cheek. “Looks like I win, eh?”
Mjolir seethed. His face turned red, and Taro could feel the anger pouring off him. Even so, the king was firmly ensnared. Taro began to search him, running through the many folds of his armor.
“Alright, where is it?” Taro asked. “The Netherlight? I know you’ve got it.”
As much as Taro searched, he couldn’t find anything. This began to worry him, as Mjolir was starting to move out of pure blackened temper.
Despite Taro’s best efforts, his templar gave way and Mjolir went in for the kill. There was no getting away this time. No dodging. No escape. Using the last scrap of his templar, Taro was able to slow Mjolir’s swing just enough to get under him. Seeing an opening, he plunged Raethelas into the old king’s heart.
Mjolir’s sword fell to the ground with a clank. Blood spilled from his wound, and he collapsed to his knees, twitching. The anger in his eyes gave way to a look of pure astonishment.
Taro dropped Raethelas reflexively, moving back toward Kyra and Lokír. There was a collective silence in the Red Hall. No cheering. No booing. Just a thick, uneasy stillness as they stared at the king, who was still gurgling up blood. A moment passed, and he stopped moving.
One of the men went to check his pulse, but it was clear the man was dead.
Taro thought it was over. But, just as he was about to speak to Lokír, he heard the man standing beside the dead king speak. His tone sounded terrified, as if he’d just seen Nuruthil himself.
“By all the gods below,” he gasped, backing away from the king’s body. And for good reason: despite being stone dead, Mjolir was moving.
They weren’t the sputtering movements of a dying man. Or the jerky movements of pain. Mjolir stood, and his limbs were shaking like a struck tuning fork. His bones and muscles cracked, and his neck and arms moved in unnatural directions.
Solid, ink-like shadows poured out of the wound in his chest, wrapping around his body, sealing his wounds, and turning the whites of his eyes pitch-black.
Then he spoke, his voice a mixture of malice and madness. “You can’t understand. The power she’s granted me. Magic like I’ve never dreamed.”
There were terrified looks around the room, and Mjolir stomped toward the hearth. Taro, unable to fight back, tried to move to the back of the crowd. When Mjolir reached them, he stood face-to-face with Lokír.
“Move aside, old friend,” Mjolir said. “His life is mine, by right.”
There was a pause. Lokír glanced back at Taro, then to Mjolir. Then, he moved. Taro felt his chest knot up as the others moved out of the way as well. He looked down at the floor, not sure what else he could do.
He braced himself for the cold steel about to run through his body. Half a moment later, he heard the swipe, but no pain came. When he looked up, he saw that Lokír had buried his axe in Mjolir’s chest. The king wailed in an unnaturally high-pitched voice, gnashing his teeth violently.
Lokír pulled his axe out of the man’s body. “You’re no king of mine.” Again, he swung, this time taking Mjolir’s head clean off.
What was left of the king fell to the floor.
There was a tense few minutes as the crowd watched the body with morbid curiosity, wondering if whatever black magic Vexis had granted him would keep him alive even through decapitation. It never happened. He was well and truly gone.
_____
The death of King Mjolir set off a firestorm in Nurengard. With the king’s duplicity exposed, Taro wasn’t especially worried about being harmed, but much was up in the air.
Quietly, Lokír had one of the valdyr, Elagra, help Taro out of the Red Hall, down the stone walkway, and into one of the healing tents. Taro counted himself as lucky. All told, he escaped with relatively minor injuries. A cut shoulder, a bruised cheek, a few sprained fingers, and utter exhaustion from expending his templar to the breaking point.
Though the huge valdyr woman hardly needed Kyra’s help to lift Taro, Kyra accompanied them to the tent. Elagra stripped off Taro’s bloodied shirt and began to clean and bandage his shoulder.
“Well,” Taro said. He sensed that Kyra had been staring at him, but didn’t meet her eye until that moment. Her eyes weren’t kind, but Taro, elated at surviving, wore a huge smile. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I still have my head.”
Kyra looked as though she was trying to keep a stern expression, and failed. She shook her head wearily. “Gods below, Taro.”
“What? It worked.” He winced a bit as Elagra applied some topical ointment to the gash on his shoulder.
“I’m trying to figure out if you’re the smartest person I’ve ever met, or the dumbest,” Kyra said. “Certainly the luckiest, at any rate.”
Taro rubbed his hand across his battered chest. “Funny, that didn’t feel lucky.”
“You’re lucky I don’t bring you up on a court martial,” Kyra said.
“I didn’t technically disobey your orders,” Taro said carefully. He made a cutting motion with his hand. “I just took a more direct path.”
There was a rustle at the tent entrance, and Lokír appeared. As he approached, Taro expected an admonishment, but instead the huge man lifted Taro off his bed in a painful embrace.
“That was masterfully done,” Lokír said against Taro’s struggles.
“Ouch,” Taro said when Lokír set him down. The hug turned into a hand shake.
“I owe you a great deal, Taro-sin,” Lokír said, shaking Taro’s hand vigorously. “Should you ever need anything at all, I’m at your service.”
“You’re not mad?” Kyra said.
“Calling him a coward in open court was bold,” Lokír said. “Had he brought you to heel, you’d be flayed alive and hung from the ramparts while the crows picked at your remains. Allowing me the killing blow was equally well done. You’ve picked up our ways quickly, Taro-sin.”
“‘Sin’?” Kyra asked. “What does that mean?”
“It is an honorific reserved for the bravest amongst us,” Lokír said. “I do not use it lightly.”
“Yeah…” Taro said sheepishly. “I have to admit, I was kind of playing it by ear.”
“Nevertheless, you’ve earned an honored place here in Nurengard. I didn’t expect such bravery and tact from a southerner,” Lokír said.
“Fantastic,” Taro said uncomfortably. Afraid of getting another hug, he scooted back a bit. “As rewards go, getting into Castiana would go a long way toward thanking me.”
Lokír produced the king’s gemstone necklace from his pockets, and held it up. In the low light of the tent, it seemed to glow. “Our way to the dragon city is clear.”
The Nuren treated Taro differently after his fight with Mjolir. They’d always been more or less friendly, bu
t largely dismissive. Now, there was a budding respect amongst them. Often the Northmen he’d encounter would bow, and offer up thanks or a longwinded story as gratitude.
It was, however, short-lived, as he’d resolved to leave Nurengard as soon as possible. First, Kyra rode ahead to tell Lord Cassin of what had happened. She returned with Fenn in tow, and explained that her uncle had agreed to lead the rest of his men back to Endra Edûn while Kyra handled things in Castiana.
Chapter Twenty-three
The Bórhiemdr
Taro had only one day to recover from his fight, and was still sore when they set off on their journey to the Bórhiemdr. Fenn, Kyra, and Lokír rode with him. Lokír was in particularly bright spirits, and even sung a few hunting songs on their forty-mile trek through Caelis Enor:
Hear me, favored sons,
Heed the horn of ages,
Clouds part and skies bleed,
Down the crimson path.
Fight ‘till the end of days,
Fight to the grit and grindstone,
Take to the skies, bury the lies,
Forge your own path now.
Hear me, favored daughters,
Heed the dawn of winter,
Winds sing and skies weep,
Up the golden road.
Fight ‘till the end of time,
Fight for weak and weary,
Take to the road, carry the load,
Forge your own path now.
Lokír’s rugged singing voice carried far over the rolling hills, and for the first time since being in Caelis Enor, Taro was able to bask in the beauty of the evergreen countryside. There was something primal about it, a wildness one didn’t see in Endra Edûn. Shallow creeks and rivers peppered the woodlands, and seemed to run past every rock and tree. The air was pure, crisp, and clean as the wind-driven snow. The persistent smell of pine and rushing water was enough to make Taro fall in love with the outdoors.