‘You were a child,’ she said. He saw disgust in her eyes.
Aye, I was. And yet in that moment I saw the truth of the world, and a smarter man would have heeded that lesson better than I ever could. Still. What’s done is done. I wager your own past ain’t all sweetness and light. Got some ghosts of your own, if I’m any judge.
‘It was the way things were done,’ Kayne said. ‘Still is, though the Reachings don’t war like they used to. The threat from the Devil’s Spine has made everyone a bit more cautious about killing each other. Most of the time,’ he added.
Isaac decided the stew was ready. The manservant passed over the cook pot. ‘Have as much as you want,’ he said. ‘You need to eat. To tell the truth, I’m surprised you pulled through. You mountain folk are a hardy lot and no mistake.’
Brodar Kayne didn’t respond. He was already stuffing his mouth. Hot stew spilled down his chin and burned his fingers, but he paid it no mind. He’d spent two years being pursued all over the High Fangs, never knowing where his next meal might come from. In that situation a man eats what he can, when he can, and in any way he can. There were times when he’d been forced to drink his own piss, and you know things are looking bleak when that prospect’s almost appealing.
The other two watched him in silence. When he’d eaten as much as he could, he felt the weakness return. He was about to nod off when Sasha’s voice drifted over and tugged him back to wakefulness.
‘You never did tell me what you and Jerek were doing in Dorminia.’
He shifted, blinked a few times to shake away the sleepiness. ‘We were on the run,’ he said, after an uncomfortable silence. ‘The Shaman has a bounty on our heads. Mine especially. Ain’t nothing he’d rather see than my ugly face on a spear above the Great Lodge.’
‘The Shaman? You mean the Magelord of the High Fangs? What did you do to upset him?’
‘Ain’t what I done, lass. It’s what I didn’t do.’ He closed his eyes and thought back to the morning the Shaman uttered the words that had frozen the blood in his veins.
Beregund must be razed to the ground.
‘I wasn’t always the sorry old bastard you see now. The Sword of the North, they named me. I was the Defender of the High Fangs, the first bulwark against the fiends that came down from the Spine. In times of war I was the instrument of the Shaman’s will.’
Sasha looked puzzled. ‘You served the Shaman?’
He nodded. ‘The fact is, I didn’t much care for right and wrong when I was a younger man. I did many things I ain’t proud of. Wasn’t until I got older that the fame and respect began to lose their lustre. Once that happens, killing is the only thing that’s left, and being the best at killing ain’t enough. Not when the weight of a man’s deeds begins to drag on him.’
He sat for a time, remembering. The wind had picked up, whistling through the boughs above them like the shrieks of a thousand lost souls. Sasha and Isaac looked at him expectantly. He cleared his throat.
‘I met Mhaira when I was maybe half the age I am now. We had our joining within a year. She was a daughter of the Green Reaching, born to a couple of herders from Beregund. A modest family, but it didn’t matter a damn to me. Not when I saw the laughter in her eyes. Thinking back, I probably thought wedding a shepherd’s daughter added to my own legend in the making.’
‘That sounds like someone I know,’ Sasha said quietly.
He thought about that for a time. ‘Aye, I reckon I can see shades of myself in the lad. I was arrogant. Proud. Conceited. Wedding Mhaira was the one thing I got right. Ain’t a day goes by that I don’t count my blessings for that one moment of good sense.’
‘What happened?’ asked Sasha, poking at the remnants of their campfire with a stick. Isaac looked on with his usual bland expression.
He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘The Shaman ordered Beregund put to the sword. Mhaira’s family. The friends I had there. All of them.’
‘Why?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s how the Shaman does things. Aye, reasons were given: the town wasn’t honouring the Treaty; they were withholding tributes due to Heartstone — that kind of thing. But what it came down to was the Shaman exercising his dominance. He was always pitting folk against each other. Culling the weak, as he called it.’
‘You refused to do as he asked.’
The old Highlander nodded. ‘The Shaman gave me a day to make my decision. I figure he thought to test me. Knowing he wouldn’t like my answer, I fled east with Mhaira. The Brethren caught me a few days later but I bought her some time to escape. Or so I thought.’
Tears threatened his eyes. He blinked them away. ‘I spent the best part of a year inside a wicker cage. The Brethren found Mhaira huddling in a cave in the Devil’s Spine and had both of us brought before the Shaman. He burned her alive. Would have been me next but for Jerek. Whatever else a man might say about him, the Wolf ain’t one to forget a debt.’
Sasha pursed her lips and stared down at the ground. ‘That’s a horrible story. Do you have any children?’
He flinched at the question. ‘I had a son. Pride of his mother and me, he was. Had his mother’s wits and his father’s skill with a sword. He… died, the day Mhaira burned.’
Silence followed his words. Isaac’s plain face was sympathetic, and even Sasha’s eyes had softened. The fire had burned down to embers. Kayne stared at the glowing ash, avoiding the gazes of those opposite him. Eventually he cleared his throat.
‘I reckon that’s enough about me. What about you, lass? What’s the story with you and boy?’
Sasha frowned back at him. ‘You mean Cole? There is no story.’
‘I saw the way he looks at you.’
‘He can look at me any way he likes. We’ve known each other for years. Garrett is my mentor too. Cole is… well, you’ve seen how he is. He’s the only person I know who can scrape through the most dangerous situations by the sheer power of his own bullshit.’
‘Aye, there’s some gap between the man he is and the man he sees in the mirror. Still, I get the feeling his heart’s in the right place.’
Sasha sighed. ‘Somewhere deep down inside him, it is. But he’s been raised to believe he’s some great hero. Garrett spoiled him.’ She shook her head. ‘Cole lives in a bubble. One day it’s going to burst and his whole world will come crashing down.’ There was a hint of concern in the girl’s voice. Concern and perhaps something more.
The old barbarian was wise enough to say nothing.
Footsteps squelched on soggy turf and Jerek reappeared, soaked through to the bone. His face was thunder.
‘Fucking things don’t work,’ he said, pointing down at the faintly glowing leather boots on his feet.
Sasha rolled her eyes. ‘That’s because they’re bondmagic. The enchantment only functions for the person linked to them. Salazar isn’t stupid enough to allow powerful artefacts such as those to be turned against him.’
Jerek looked down at the boots in disgust and spat. ‘Could have told me that before I prised them from the stinking feet of that bastard. Waste of fucking time, this whole journey. And roll those pretty eyes at me again and you’ll regret it.’
Kayne flexed his neck, loosening muscles that had grown stiff during his convalescence. ‘We’ve got a two-day march until we reach Dorminia. I reckon it’ll go smoother if we all make the effort to be civil.’ No one answered. Sasha and Jerek stared daggers at one another. Isaac busied himself tidying the camp. Kayne sighed. ‘Fine. Silence suits me just as well.’
‘I spotted a small town a few miles west of here,’ Jerek said abruptly. ‘We can buy supplies. Maybe rest until this shitty weather passes.’ He rubbed at his scarred face as if he could do with a break, but Brodar Kayne knew the truth of the matter. In spite of everything, the realization pricked at him.
Wounded pride? Stupid old fool. You never learn. He climbed to his feet, niggling pains assailing him from every direction, so many he didn’t even bother to try and count them all. He forced his stubbly face into a rictus of a smile.