AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Erelan Kreed laughed, but it was an uncertain laugh.
With a bright, sidelong glance, Lasa turned away. ‘We should be going. I will make a play of purpose to this wayward impulse, and shake the reins of my two work-horses.’
Frowning, Hanako knelt at his pack and drew out what little spare clothing he’d thought to bring with him. Overhead, the morning sun was already warm upon his torn back, making each gash sting. Yes, she was right to call them hers, although thus far neither he nor Erelan advanced any claim to an inviting caress. Three husbands left behind and Lasa Rook was yet to betray any greed to add others to her night beneath the furs. Work-horses indeed.
Gingerly, he drew on a worn hemp-woven shirt, and then leggings of the same coarse material.
‘Be sure to bring that fur,’ Erelan Kreed said as Hanako gathered up his gear. ‘It is a warrior’s way to wear their conquests, and to accept gifts from the Lord and Ladies of the Wild. By that cloak, Hanako, you honour the slain.’
Lasa kicked her way through the coals of the hearth, stamping each one underfoot. ‘Your way, Kreed, and none other’s. You’ll wear honour as if it fits, even as it stretches and tears to the swell of pride. The slain crowd your wake, and their realm is no more and no less than resentment. That you breathe in their stead. That your hearts still pound in your chest. That you move in flesh and bone and make nothing of the ghosts that haunt you. All of this gnaws their souls without resolution.’
But Erelan was humming again, as he tied up his bedroll.
Drawing close to Hanako once more, Lasa Rook dropped her voice. ‘Oh, do take the fur, Hanako. You wrestled it off the lord, after all. And all for want of a decent night’s sleep.’
‘I would have yielded,’ said Hanako, ‘had he given me the choice.’
‘It’s said that fear eats at a soul, but I would say it differently. Fear eats away at the choices before you, Hanako, until but one remains. The Lord of Temper knew that fear.’
‘He emerged to find me blocking his escape from the cave, Lasa Rook.’
She nodded. ‘And in nature he is no different from us. We do not understand the notion of retreat.’ She turned then to study the way ahead and below. The mountainside tumbled away in ridges, down into a forested valley. A glittering lake was awakening to the rising sun in the valley’s deep basin. ‘Even this march,’ she continued, ‘is ridiculous.’ The thought brought a bright smile to her as she swung back to grin at Hanako. ‘What direction? Where lies death, brave young warrior? To the east, where the sun is reborn each dawn? To the west, where it falls away each dusk? What of the south, where fruit rots on the branch and insects swarm without rest upon the ground, in daily tasks of dismemberment? Or perhaps the bitter north, where a sleeping woman awakens to find the corpse-serpent has stolen half her body? Or awakens not at all, and lies unchanging for all time? In each direction, death stands triumphant. We seek to join the Jaghut-with-ashes-in-his-heart. We march here to join his march there – but where is there?’
Hanako shrugged. ‘This I would know, too, Lasa Rook. I would see how this Jaghut answers.’
‘Is it a worthy war?’
He glanced away, down into the verdant valley, down to that silver blade of a lake, remembering the conversation that had begun this journey. The tale, arriving on unseen wings, of a grieving Jaghut, railing against the death that took his wife, and the terrible vow that came of that. Was it not the fate of the living to struggle with the feeling of impotence that came in the witnessing of death? Was there not, in truth, nothing to be done, nothing but weathering the weight, the clawing anguish, the fierce anger? How bold could this Jaghut be, in declaring war upon death itself?
There had been mocking laughter, as if all present would test each other, would beat as if with swords on the mettle of the Thel Akai and their perverse appreciation of delicious, maddening absurdity. And yet. How quickly the derision gave way to that dark current in their souls, as remembered grief rose like ghosts in the night, as each and every instance of impotence bled anew. And so the conversation curled in on itself, all humour lost, and in its place emerged a blackened, scorched gleefulness. A delight sweeter than any other. A burgeoning astonishment at the Jaghut’s glorious audacity.
Many dreams were offered up, beckoning, inviting a soul to follow. Few were mundane. Fewer still were even possible. But in each, Hanako knew, there was a taste of something like hope, sufficient to lure one on to that path, if only in the realm of the wishful. Dreams were to be tolerated, year after year the flavour dulling with pity and diminished by bitter experience, until they burned holes in the gut. He knew that all too well, even when he was mocked for his youth – since when, after all, did dreams belong only to the old and wise, who knew them solely by the disappointment left behind? Was it not the realm of children that still beckoned, crowded, as it was, to the heavens with dreams – dreams not yet slashed to ribbons, not yet torn down, or rotted from within?
Death was the reaper of ambition, the devourer of hope. So muttered the ancients in every village, around the night’s hearth-fires, with the flames animating the death-masks of their faces. Only memories could live in such faces, when the nights ahead promised so little.
Still … born with ambition and knowing only hope, children knew nothing of death.
Conversations such as the one Hanako had witnessed in his village had no doubt burst up like wildfires among all the Thel Akai settlements, from mountain to coast and in all the valley settlements that huddled between the two. The Jaghut had called for an army, in the name of a war that could not be won.
The Thel Akai gave their answer with the drumbeat of heavy, bitter laughter, and said, That is a war we can wage.
The pathos of such a claim was enough to make one drunk. He felt that loose, wild surge rising up again in his chest as he pondered Lasa Rook’s question. Its taste was a fool’s triumph. ‘A worthy war? It is, I think, the only worthy war.’
Her laughter was low, with a kind of intimacy that made Hanako’s skin prickle with sweat beneath his clothes. ‘You will speak for me, then,’ she said, ‘in my defence.’
He frowned. ‘I do not understand. Your defence against whom?’
‘Why, my husbands, of course, once they figure out where I went.’ She turned then and squinted expectantly back up the mountain trail, before once again flashing him that smile. ‘But let us lead them a fair chase! What say you, bold slayer of the Lord of Temper?’
Hanako looked across to Erelan Kreed. The huge warrior appeared to have been stricken by
Lasa Rook’s revelation. ‘Damn you, Lasa Rook!’ he growled.
Her brows lifted. ‘What have I done now?’
‘Leave it to you,’ Erelan said, ‘to make even this war a complicated one.’
In a sudden surge of appreciation, Hanako smiled across at Erelan Kreed, and then he burst out his laughter. Upon seeing the flare of pride in the warrior’s eyes, Hanako’s laughter redoubled.
