Dragonhammer: Volume II (24 page)

I say nothing as we lift the stone that will seal him away from us.  It takes all four of us to lift the heavy block, though it is thin.  I watch my brother’s body disappear behind the stone.

The block fits perfectly into the slot and with a scrape it locks into place.  On it are engraved the words:

Nathaniel Armstrong

Warrior, Brother, and Son

I glare at the inscription and listen to the music.  I am suddenly hit by a wave of remorse that threatens to drop me to the floor.  The realization that I will never see him again is stronger than any warrior I have ever faced.  Over and over again I read his name as if it will somehow bring his body from behind the stone and revive him.  My eyes well.

The others begin to leave, but the choir stays.  Percival rests his hand on my shoulder as he follows the Jarl down the hall.  Aela looks at me sadly and almost says something, but decides against it and stares at the floor.

Peace my brother,

Sleep Ever.

A single tear falls from my right eye as the choir finishes.  The tear hits my hand and I lift my hand up to my face to examine the small streak of water, as if I have never seen one before.  The drop hangs from my first finger.  My hand begins to shake.  Quickly it becomes uncontrollable and I fling the tear from my hand as hard as I can.  My knuckles turn white as my hands clench and the quivering moves to my arms.  My jaw tenses and my chest rises.  Without my permission, my hands draw my hammer from my back and I turn to exit the hall.  One name blares at me in my head.  He won’t just die.  He will suffer.

Sythian.

A Talk with Aela

I
don’t bother to step foot into the city; I linger alone in the forest. 

My hammer hangs by my side, ready for use.  Silently it begs me to wield it.  Smash something, it says. Anything.

I look up at the sky through the canopy of leaves.  It’s overcast.  Rain might come upon us soon.  I don’t care.

My eyes close and I tilt my head forward.  I take a deep breath.  Slowly my eyes open and I focus on the thick trunk of the tree in front of me.  Then my hammer swings.

My breathing quickens and my heart races.  Branches break and my joints jar.  Once again I find myself in the tower of Balgr’s Bastion the night before, surrounded by tens of men commanded to take my life.

Energy in the form of wrath pumps through every section of my body.  Bark flies.  No soldier falls.  The trees are too thick.

My teeth are clenched and my breath hisses loudly through them.

Why him?
I scream inside. 
Why?  WHY?!

The spike sticks into a bough and I wrench it out, throwing the weight at another innocent tree.

Because you weren’t good enough.  You were stupid.  You made the wrong decision.

With a yell I slam another bough and a flock of birds flies away squawking.

You need to be stronger.  Faster.  Smarter.  If you were stronger this wouldn’t have happened.  He would be alive.

I am in the stone halls.  I hear the chaos of fighting.  The walls and floor are grey.  A carpet the color of blood leads up the middle.

If only you were stronger.

Every tree becomes an effigy of Sythian.  His face laughs at me from every direction, blood staining his teeth and dripping from his chin.  One of them seems scared.  As my hammer swings he draws his sword, but I hit it away and he is unable to hold on.  Then I see Aela.

I’m standing in the green forest.  My hammer is raised beside me, ready to unleash a killing blow.

Aela sits in front of me as if she fell there.  Her hand is raised like it will protect her from my weapon.  She squints at me timidly.  Her sword gleams from across the clearing.

In horror I drop my hammer.  It thumps into the dirt softly.  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, helping her up.

“What are you doing out here?” she asks quietly.

“I could ask you the same thing,” I reply, lifting my hammer.

She nods and says nothing.

Irritated, I move to another tree and prepare to throw my weapon in a mighty arc.  Then she says, “It was horrible.”

I’m surprised.  “What are you talking about?” I ask harshly.

She gives me a you-should-know-what-I’m-talking-about look.  When I don’t respond, she stares at her feet and says softly, “The orphanage.”

I nod and say, “Why are you bringing this up now?”

She steps forward and answers, “Because I think there’s something you need to get off of your chest.”

I hesitate.  “Have something in mind?”

“You loved him.”

“Of course.  He’s my brother.”

She inches forward.  Delicately with a voice soft as silk she says, “You feel responsible?”

I don’t answer.

“You’re not to blame, Kadmus,” she comforts.  “You did everything you could.”

“Did I?”

“Yes,” she replies.  Stronger she continues, “You did everything you could to save your brother.”

“It wasn’t enough,” I whisper.  She struggles to find something to say.  “I wasn’t good enough,” I continue.  “I couldn’t do it.”  My voice falters.

“You are the strongest man I know, Kadmus,” she states.  “If you couldn’t do it then no one could.”

“I told him I wouldn’t let anything happen to him.”  She is silent.  “I never got to say goodbye.”  As I say those words I feel the hole in my heart solidify as if a testament to my guilt.  I am unable to soften it, as I was unable to save Nathaniel.

Aela steps closer and I feel her hand gently bump mine.  I refuse to look at her, though she gazes up at me imploringly.  “I’m sorry,” she whispers.  “Kadmus…”  She looks down at the ground and then back up at me, but I continue to avoid her gaze.  “I am so sorry.”

My nose twitches as my lip tightens.  My eyes well but before anything can fall, I roar and swing my hammer as hard as I can at the nearest tree.  The bough breaks and swings helplessly on the last few strands of fiber that connect it to the trunk.

“I shouldn’t have come…” she mutters.  “I’m sorry.”

“No,” I blurt suddenly, dropping the weapon.  She stops and turns her head to look at me.  I feel tears coming on again and force them away as I beg weakly, “Please don’t go.”

“Why?” she says quietly, stepping cautiously towards me.

I collapse onto a log.  The answer evades me, but at the same time wants to jump out of my mouth and make a fool of me.  Fortunately, when I find the answer, I have enough sense to think about what I am going to say.

“Because I need you.”

She sits on the log next to me.  “Why would you need me?” she asks in disbelief.

Once again I think.  “Why wouldn’t I?” I whisper.  Shaking my head, and feeling rather foolish, I lift myself from the log and stand a few paces away.

“Because…” she says.  I look at her, waiting for her answer.  “I’m not…”  Her mouth shuts again and she looks around, anywhere but me.  Then, taking a deep breath, she makes to say something, but once again pauses and shuts her mouth.  Finally she says simply, “I’m not the perfect person you think I am.”

“No one is,” I reply.  “But we love them anyway.”

She inhales sharply and doesn’t speak for several seconds.  When she does, her voice is soft.  “Do you remember when I asked you how?”

“Which time?”  I’m surprised sarcasm has slipped into my voice at a time such as this.

“How you could love them so much?”

I nod.

“I think I know now.”

I lean against a tree and study the hammer on the ground.  “Explain,” I mutter.

She hesitates before saying, “Your family… was the first place I actually felt like I had a friend.  I felt like I was a part of your family.  I’ve never had that anywhere before or since.  You had no idea who I was or where I came from, yet you took me in and cared for me.  You actually carried me most of the way to Terrace.”  She smiles when the thought comes to mind.

“You wanted none of that,” I add.  “When you woke up I mean.”

Her grin broadens.  “You get my point though?  I didn’t understand it before.  Who would do something like that for someone they didn’t know?  For the first time in my life I actually felt…”  My gaze coaxes the last word from her.  “…loved.”

I only nod.

She continues when she sees I have nothing to say.  “I also see why love is…”  I notice she chooses her words carefully.  “…considered weakness by some.  For the first time I feel grief.  True grief.  Not only for Nathaniel, but for your father.  And all the people I have injured through one way or another.”

I nod again.

She pauses.  “I’m not saying this to praise myself,” she says tentatively, looking down.  “I’m saying this to praise you.”

I shake my head and a smile tugs at my lip, like she told a bad joke.  “Why would you be praising me?”

She thinks, but only for a short moment.  “Because you taught me how to love.”

“Why are you telling me this now?”

This time she replies without the slightest hesitation.  “You need it most now.”

My steel heart lurches.  I feel it soften inside of me.  A great weight is lifted from my chest.  Then she hugs me around the middle.

I exhale deliberately.  As the darkness leaves with the air, I feel something else enter.  The pure light finds my maw of a heart, eaten away by grief.  Then, impossibly, the maw begins to heal.

The light slowly trickles into the maw, filling every crack and crevice within.  I am overcome with the smallest hope that she can fill it.  The darkness has not yet won.

My arms raise themselves and I return the embrace, holding her close.

I don’t know how long we stand there.  No words are spoken, but I still enjoy every second of it.

She leaves me in the forest with a comforting smile and nod.  Her hand lingers for a second on my own, but she pulls away and walks up the path to the city.  I gaze at her, wondering who in the world I had run into that day at Dragongate Bridge.  Then she disappears behind the trees.

I resume my fight with the tree.

It begins to rain.  The drizzle is light and I stay relatively dry underneath the canopy of leaves.  It is not the wet, however, that drives me back into the city.  It’s hunger. 

The forest has a different sort of life about it during a rainstorm, even one as mild as this.  There are no bugs, for instance.  The gnats that had been nipping at me relentlessly have retreated into their dry homes.

The greenery is always fresher as well, during the rain.  The green is brighter and in some places more verdant than when the sky and ground are dry.  I can see the emerald veins of wide leaves and the diamond drops of water racing down them carefully.  Always the patter of light rain on the green.

I look up to the sky and allow a few drops to run their course down my face.  The dirt path becomes damp, but not muddy, darkening the loamy dirt.

Shafts of golden sunlight beam down upon the scene, but they disappear and reappear as the dark clouds move.  The western sky appears equally as dark.  The rest of the night will not be nearly this enjoyable.

A bird chirrups in discontent at a droplet that plops down onto its tiny head.  Then it flies away.

“So much beauty,” I remark quietly, absorbing the wondrous scene.  My gaze falls down upon my hammer, which I still hold loosely at my side.  “And so much pain,” I whisper.  I had cleaned it just this morning of the blood that clung to it greedily.  The blood of how many men?  Even if I had the mental capacity to count during a battle, I would be emotionally stricken and rendered useless.  “Too many,” I answer aloud.

I wonder how long it will go?  How long before one of us meets our match?
  Nathaniel’s words ring in my head like a shrieking bell.

There was no match.  That evil scab of a Jarl cheated.  There was no match that was met.  It was trickery.  Lies and coldblooded murder.  When I find him he shall have no mercy from me.

I exit the forest and cross the short plain to the gate of the city, which stands open to allow me inside.  My hammer swings threateningly beside me, and nobody gives me more than a second glance for fear of beginning something that shouldn’t be begun.

I glance up to my right once I enter the gate.  We have left the remains of the ballistae and done nothing to repair them.  Fine.

The city is silent, recovering from the battle that had shaken its streets in the night.  Men try their best to go about their work.  Women and children stay in their homes.  Soldiers clean up the last of the bodies.

The houses are dark in the shadow of the black clouds.  The rain begins to pick up.  The droplets get bigger.

My boots clomp on the stone of the street authoritatively.  I avoid all eyes that turn to look at me; I have no business with them.  The only business I care for at the moment is my business with Sythian, who decided to go running at our last deal. 

The gates of Balgr’s Bastion are closed, but I don’t stop to wait for the guards to open them.  It won’t be locked.  Why would it be?  They are expecting me.

I bang through the doors of the castle, making the guards on either side nearly jump from their greaves.  One of them blows out his cheeks.  Once he thinks I cannot hear, he says to his companion, “Someone pissed him off.”

“Really?” says the other.

With the slightest of sneers I turn left down the hall to find the stairs.  I refuse to take the right-hand stairwell.

Now that I’m not in the midst of a life-threatening situation, I take the time to study the interior of the Bastion.  The stone of the floor and walls is white and smooth.  There are no cracks, and the crevices between blocks are few and far between.  A red carpet is rolled out down the middle of the hallway and up the stairs.

At the base and tops of the walls, there’s a thin layer of dark grey stone.  The hall is arched.

Some soldiers have been tasked with taking down the Diagrall flags and banners.  We will burn them publicly and replace them with our own emblems.

The stairs climb up several stories.  With stony eyes I pass the floor onto which I had chased Sythian.  The next floor up, I finally turn right from the stairs and into the arched hallway.

The Jarl waits behind a large pair of wooden double doors. 
When it comes to castles,
I think,
we’re not really much for interior variety are we?

I pound in the doors without asking permission to enter.  The guards jump a foot in the air, like I had smacked their backsides rather than the door.