Brotherhood Saga 03: Death (22 page)

“Settlements, farmers—“

“Farmers?” Odin frowned. “I thought Elves didn
’t eat meat.”

“They don
’t. They farm vegetables, cotton, silk—that sort of thing.”

“Sorry,” Odin said, offering a slight smile in response to his ignorant stupidity. “I sometimes let my tongue run before I should.”

“No need to apologize,” Virgin said, returning the smile in full. “Come. We have a full day’s travel ahead of us.”

Around noon, they passed what could only be called a grave of monstrous proportions. In hues of grey, black and silver, the bones that blanketed the barren clearing seemed to extend so far into the distance that Odin had trouble seeing what could be an end—where, at the peak of it all, stood a series of stone columns emblazoned with what appeared to be neat, Elvish writing, though what exactly it said he couldn’t tell. He could only imagine that it had to have meant something of the dead, of the living and of what came after life, though try as he may, he could not come up with a great excuse to step forward and ponder over what he was seeing.

After what felt like an eternity of silence, Odin swallowed the lump in his throat and asked, “What is it?”

“A graveyard,” Virgin said.

“For what?”

“Creatures to come and die.”

“They come to die here?” Odin
frowned. “But why?”

“Some creatures prefer to leave their bodies in places where others can
’t touch them—preferably, between these four monoliths that stand around us.” Virgin pointed to the columns in front of them, then to the two that stood almost directly beside them. “The Elvish text holds magic.”

“What does it say?”

“And so for I have died, I will come to rest here, where my body cannot be touched and my soul cannot be taken.”

“It
’s beautiful,” Odin said, running a finger along the writing on one stone column.

Immediately, every hair on his body stood on end.

Static burst in his ears.

Shivers ran up and down his spine.

Each joint in his left hand seemed to tighten until each individual piece of bone and cartilage popped.

“Ouch,” he whispered, drawing his hand away as
carefully as possible.

“It
’s best not to touch them,” Virgin said, pressing a hand against his back. “I don’t think they’ll hurt you, but their wards are definitely strong.”

“I felt it.”

“The magic, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“I do too,” the taller Halfling said, reaching down to lace his fingers within Odin’s left hand. “Does that hurt?”

“No.”

“I’m glad.”

Do you care,
he thought,
or are you just being sympathetic?

Whatever the reason and regardless of the intent, there seemed a compassion between the
m that he could not deny, even though he felt trapped and encaged within the amulet that rested upon his chest. Virgin, while careful, seemed not to feel animosity toward him, and while cautious didn’t mind his company. Odin, on the other hand, didn’t particularly feel as though what was happening to him was right, but he couldn’t necessarily say he didn’t like the Halfling’s attention either.

Is this what I am?
he thought, staring back into the other man’s eyes.

“Odin?” Virgin asked, squeezing his hand. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he said, tearing his eyes away from his companion’s to turn his attention on the graveyard before him. “Just… thinking.”

“About?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

“We should go,” Virgin said.

“Yeah,” Odin replied. “We should.”

The rain began as first a trickle and then a haze. Ever so swiftly pouring down upon them in great sheets, it skirted along the rivulets cut into the ground by upended tree roots and swam through places in the path were grass grew green. Slowly, like a monolith ascending from beneath the ground, it rose to ankle level and eventually tapered out to where only the first breath of their boots were covered, but that alone was enough to force all forms of wildlife from their homes. Squirrels, raccoons, rabbits, a few deer and even a wild cat small and not in any way threatening ran past them and to the outer edges of the wood, toward where likely the canyon-like terrain siphoned the water and fed the living plants beneath.

“Are we going to be all right?” Odin asked, having to raise his voice over the sound of water dripping from the pines
so Virgin to hear.

“We should be fine,” the Halfling said. “Don
’t worry.”

A roar of thunder sounded across the sky, followed shortly by a crack of lightning.

Odin looked up just in time to see what appeared to be a wolf run past them.

“What the,” he asked.

Lightning struck.

An explosion rent the sky.

“Did it just—“

Directly before them, one great, mighty branch came down.

“Shit!” Odin cried, jumping away from the branch as it began to float downstream toward them.

“Just jump over it,” Virgin said.

Odin did just that before it could hit him square in the ankles.

“We should get somewhere safe,”
Odin said, grimacing as thunder growled across the horizon and threatened them with yet more lightning. “Is there anywhere we can go?”

“Not that I know of.”

Odin grimaced and lifted one foot as another clod of debris came from the north.

Shaking his head, careful to follow Virgin
’s steps exactly as to not trip or fall, Odin reached forward and locked his hand onto the Halfling’s shirt just in time for the rain to bear down even harder, this time with what felt like hail descending in thick, fingernail-sized clumps.

Great,
he thought.
Here I am without my magic and now it’s hailing.

“We
’ll keep going,” Virgin said, reaching back to take his hand, “until we find a cave or a tree to hide under.”

“Are you sure that
’s the safest thing we can do?”

“A strike of lightning isn
’t going to bring down any trees, Odin.”

“Yeah, but… the branches!”

The entire horizon was lit in one great sheen of white.

A pair of eyes winked back at them.

Odin blinked and stared into the darkened distance, toward where he’d seen not only something that vaguely resembled a human form, but the illumination from a pair of hawk-like eyes.

“What was that?” Odin asked.

“What was what?” Virgin frowned.

The figure lunged forward.

Pushing Virgin aside, Odin drew his sword, struck the creature in the gut, then impaled it on the tip of his sword just in time for its barbed tongue to hiss out at him in the final moments in his life.

When he was sure it was dead, he freed it from his sword and looked down at its façade.

“What the hell is this?” Odin asked, staring down at the corpse.

“Kehrama,” Virgin replied. “Cat people.”

The thing—which, by all measures, appeared human—wore a black-and-grey striped coat that stuck out a hair’s length from its body and held within its head a pair of eyes orange and dagger-like in appearance. Long, emaciated, and with a body that seemed almost amorphous in forms of both skeletal and muscular structure, it looked upon first glance to have been a corpse within its advanced stages of decay, with a dome-shaped head and a ribcage he could have easily fit both hands between, though from the look of things it was anything but. Instead, it looked prime to kill, with its twin, knife-like incisors peaking out from beneath its upper lip and the five claws on its humanlike hands disengaged and ready to strike.

It could have killed him,
he thought, turning his head to look at Virgin, who still remained in the water with an incredulous look on his face.

“Are you hurt?” Odin asked, holding his s
word steady as if the now-dead Kehrama would rise and attempt to kill him. “Virgin.
Virgin.”

“What?” the Halfling asked.

“I said
are you hurt?”

“I
’m… fine,” he said, narrowing his eyes at the corpse. “Are you?”

Not bothering to deal with pleasantries, Odin reached down, gripped his companion
’s hand, then pulled him to his feet with little more than a grunt.

“I didn
’t know there were any this far out,” Virgin said, tilting his eyes up to look at Odin. “You saved my life.”

“It would
’ve killed you if I hadn’t pushed you down.”

“I know, which is why I
’m getting rid of this.”

Virgin snapped his hand out and tore the amulet away from Odin
’s neck before he even had the chance to blink.

“What,” he started.

“You saved my life,” Virgin said, thumbing the centerpiece of the object before sliding it into a pouch at his side. “The least I can do is free you from your bonds.”

“Are you—“

“There’s no time to argue. We need to go—now.”

“What are they?” Odin asked.

Under the cover of a group of trees dense and thick enough to shroud them from the rain, Odin started a fire with the palm of his hand and turned his attention up to Virgin as he tended to what appeared to be a slight scrape on his shoulder. Both uneasy at the fact that he had accidentally hurt his friend and dreading the reality that they were still out on open ground after the near-fatal attack, he watched the water flow around the edge of the upraised campsite and continue
to the north, toward the distant forest and the place they had entered through no more than a day or so ago.

“Kehrama?” Virgin asked, lifting his eyes from his progress to look at Odin.

“I’ve never heard of them before.”

“Like I said, they
’re a race of cat people who have been in the forest for as long as the Elves have, if not longer.”

“Are they sentient?”

“If you mean capable of understanding Elvish or human, no, they’re not.”

“Have the Elves even tried communicating with them?”

“So far as I know, yes, but from what I remember, it didn’t work out so well for the Elves. The cat people, as we like to call them, have always refused any offering we’ve supplied and even attacked our people at one point in time.”

“What do the Elves living in the settlements do?”

“Build walls or live in trees high enough to keep away from them.”

“Can
’t they—“

“Climb?” Virgin waited for Odin to say something further before offering a smile. “They are, after all, cats.”

Are they?
Odin thought.
Or do they just look like them?

It could be argued that the Kehrama were no more cat than they were a race of upright-walking feline creatures, those of which preferred to skirt around the fringes of the forest and watch through the darkness people or things that had stepped into their territory. If Virgin had been right, and if the cat people really didn
’t live this far from the northern edge of the forest, then something must have stirred this particular one from its nest.

But what?

Shivering in the damp chill that press4r in on them, he drew his cloak around his body and drew back against Virgin. The food not yet served, their stomachs growling, Odin kept silent, but eventually gave in to his better inhibitions and laid his head on the taller man’s lower arm.

“I
’m glad you’re all right,” he said, closing his eyes and reveling in touch Virgin offered when laying an arm across his shoulder.

“I am too. To be perfectly honest, though, I thought I was going down.”

“I’m faster than you’d think.”

“Where did you learn to draw a sword like that?”

My father,
he thought, then began to tremble.

Up until that moment, he had not considered that the man who had raised him for most of his life had not truly been his father, but a surrogate who
’d likely taken him only out of pity or remorse. The reasons behind that he couldn’t be sure, but were he to have imagined it, he felt as though Ectris must have been accosted on a long, lonely night, when the rain fell heavy just like it did now and a figure stepped from the darkness bearing a child that could barely even breathe.
Take him,
Miko must have said,
for I cannot.

Nineteen, almost twenty yea
rs later, here he was—that very red-eyed baby who’d landed on a doorstep only to be left with a man who knew nothing of his lineage or the creature that had delivered him.

Who was my mother?
he thought, only opening his eyes when a rumble of thunder ebbed from the sky.