Brotherhood Saga 03: Death Page 3

  “We’ll live, hon. Don’t worry.”

  “Oh, I’m not worried. I know the both of you are strong enough, but… well, when you lose someone, it’s hard, almost like the whole world’s up in arms.”

  And ready to burn you alive.

  What a perfect metaphor for such a simple thing.

  Taking the unoccupied seat next to Nova as his own, Odin leaned against his friend’s shoulder, then sighed when the man’s hand fell across his back.

  As their heads touched, knocking together softly and without any ill intent, he couldn’t help but remember the old days—when, as a child, he had wandered long roads and wished without a thought in the world that the future would be grand and filled with nothing but good.

  How ignorant was I?

  To think that life would be grand, that nothing would come without consequence, that always things would be great, shining and beautiful—idealism could often be found within those young and without regret, in children and people who knew nothing of the world and the rules upon which they were hindered. Some could look to the sky and one day wish to fly, then find in ten year’s time that such a thing was not possible. Others, meanwhile, could dream of seeing beyond the hemisphere, toward the stars and just what lay within the abyss of darkness that seemed to shadow over them each and every night. Whatever way one sliced it, dreams were not always meant to come true, especially when they seemed too far off, and life could not always be perfect, even when molded in such concrete forms.

  After taking but a moment to compose himself on his friend’s shoulder, Odin leaned back, closed his eyes, then tilted his head up to the ceiling.

  He couldn’t help but wonder if life would return to normalcy—if, by the end of all this, he would be back in the king’s chamber, stroking his dogs and continuing his life as a humble servant.

  The afternoon brought with it storm clouds.

  Standing at the top of Dwaydor’s highest wall and garbed beneath a cloak that veiled everything but the bottom of his face, Odin watched the distant horizon with a sense of trepidation he couldn’t help but feel in spite of all the silence around him. The thunder distant, the storm anything but a threat, it seemed as though summoned by a conjurer’s wild hand to serve only as a form of harassment to a heart that had not and probably would never recover.

  Does it always do this, he thought, when a loved one dies?

  A chain of lightning burst on the horizon and flowered across the sky, snaking its vines through formations of clouds and lighting the distance.

  In that moment—when the entire southern horizon seemed to be but one expanse of blue—Odin expelled a held-in breath. Chest tight, breath slowly rasping in and out of his chest, he locked his hands around the railing and tried to keep himself under control.

  At his sides, the guards walked back and forth, either completely oblivious to his presence or ignorant at the least. They knew of his purpose on the walls—knew that, in spite of his attire, he was, in fact, the former commander of the Ornalan military—but why they hadn’t stopped to acknowledge him was beyond his recollection. Maybe they just had nothing to say—or, maybe, they just didn’t want to speak for fear that, should their tongues slip, and should their consciences tremble, they may very well spew venom in the eyes of a child who could easily go blind for the rest of his life.

  In the moments that occurred after his initial thought, he couldn’t help but see that his perception of the world had been altered—skewed, distorted, made to look as though only he suffered and that everyone else was trivial. An Elf may have died, and a mighty force may have been put to rest by a weapon that could only be described as monstrous and uncanny, but that did not mean the world wept for him: that the rain, though slowly rolling in the distance, had once again returned to mourn.

  “You’re such an idiot,” he whispered. “Such a stupid, stupid fucking idiot.”

  As his hands tightened around the railing, the wood whispering of splinters that could embed themselves within his skin, tears began to drop from his face and down onto his hands, staining his skin and the wood dark brown. Such open displays of emotion had become casual and expected from him, considering the circumstances, but each and every time that horrible thing began to stir in his chest, a certain form of weakness began to overwhelm his conscience, one of which seemed to impact his entire being and hurl him from his current perspective on the world.

  How can I continue without you?

  Who would be there when he messed up—when, out of the blue, a problem fell into his lap and something needed to be done? Who would stand to be his council, sit to be his companion or rest to be his salvation; and who, by God, the Gods or nothing, would sit up late at night to watch over his dreams and fears, his hopes and aspirations, his future and destiny?

  When yet more tears came, and as the rain began to fall and mask his tears away from any wandering eyes, the realization struck him so hard he felt as though he could not, nor ever would, go on.

  No one would watch over him.

  From here on out, he was on his own.

  There was nothing he could do.

  “You’re soaked,” Carmen said.

  Odin said nothing.

  Standing in the threshold, allowing the rain to fall around him without any rage, roar or protest, he watched the little creature that seemed too willing to care for his heart and tried to discern the emotion that lay on her face.

  This is Carmen, his conscience whispered. The Drake Slayer of Ehknac.

  He knew there was nothing to worry about. She was a friend—a person whom he could trust—but looking upon her in the strange half-light that fell from the open doorway made him feel as though nails were being drawn along a chalkboard. A whisper ran along his spine, a tremble echoed throughout his frame and a horrible notion that could not be described struck a chord in his heart and vibrated into his brain.

  Such an ugly sound, he thought, for such a noble purpose.

  “Odin,” the Dwarf said, extending her word as though he were incapable of hearing two-word syllables. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m… fine. Why?”

  “You’re just standing there, in the rain.”

  It took him but a moment to realize that he’d been standing in the storm. His composure was so shaken by the matter that when he did step into city hall, only to track in with him a sopping load of clothes, he immediately began to shiver and started to disrobe shortly thereafter.

  “Something’s wrong,” Carmen frowned. “Tell me.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No you’re not.”

  Yes I am.

  When he’d stripped down to nothing but his underwear and stood directly before the Dwarf, he shook his head, tossed his hair back over his shoulders, then arched his back, shivering as a cold gust of air shifted through the barely-open doorway.

  “Odin,” Nova said, stepping from the side hall and approaching him from across the room. “You’re—“

  “Soaked,” Carmen said, cutting Nova off before he could finish. “Just like I said he was.”

  “I’m fine,” Odin sighed, gathering his clothes up into his arms. “Please, guys—just give me a moment.”

  “You shouldn’t have been out there by yourself.”

  “So now I can’t even have a moment alone?”

  “I never said—“

  “You don’t have to say it, Carmen. I already know.”

  “Odin,” Nova said, extending his arm as he began to cross the room. “Come on, buddy.”

  “Leave me alone, Nova.”

  “But—“

  “But nothing!”

  With one simple thrust of his shoulder, he knocked his friend aside and sent him stumbling into the wall.

  Odin barely bothered to take a look back as he crossed the threshold.

  Once in the hall, he turned, took the second door on his left, then stepped into his personal private sanctuary and locked the door behind him.

  When he stood ful
ly naked in the office, before a row of open windows that looked out at what used to be a beautiful garden, a horrible sense of dread began to overwhelm his entire being.

  A fire started in his chest.

  A creature reared its ugly head.

  Odin collapsed into a chair and began to cry.

  He kept the door locked until the day eclipsed to dusk.

  When men outside began to banter back and forth, speaking on matters completely unrelated to the city or the current happenings around them, Odin dressed from the waist down, attached his swords to his belt, then made his way out the door.

  Immediately after he crossed over and into the waiting room, all eyes turned on him.

  Nova and Carmen sat at the far side, watching him with uneasy eyes.

  “Hey,” Nova said.

  “Hey,” Odin replied.

  As the men around him turned their eyes back to one another, no longer talking in tones jovial and sincere, Odin crossed the room and stood directly before Carmen and Nova, unnerved at the way their eyes seemed to trace his body from head to toe and then back again. It seemed, in that moment, that they were examining him for any and every flaw he could possibly have—from the scars on his hip, the definition in his abs to the mysterious lack of hair on his torso. All, at that moment, seemed up for interrogation, for he was not the person he used to be but a monster savage and insincere to the very people he considered to be two of his best friends in his entire world.

  In the moments that followed, Odin tried not to meet their eyes, but to no avail.

  No matter how hard he tried, no matter how desperate or ashamed he felt, he could not help but long for his friends’ love and respect.

  “I’m sorry about earlier,” Odin said, falling to his knees before Carmen, then taking her hand. “I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

  “It’s all right,” the Dwarf said, stroking his knuckles and easing her palm around the flesh of his palm.

  “You really do need to tell us if something’s going on,” Nova said, setting a hand atop Odin’s shoulder. “You can’t keep whatever it is you’re feeling bottled up.”

  “I know, Nova.”

  “So… is there anything you want to tell us?”

  “No.”

  Yes.

  How desperately he wanted to say that he felt as though the world was bearing down around him—that, slowly, the ground was opening and preparing to swallow him whole; that the sky seemed to take on a density that resembled something of stonework in a grand blacksmith’s forge and that the ground below had grown hard and impenetrable. At any moment, it seemed, he would simply be crushed in two, then allowed to bleed forth and onto the floor around him, crushed by the matters at hand and the grief that came with them. The notion alone forced a shiver throughout his body that he visibly expressed, though he felt as though the smile he offered would cover for any unease that could have been taken from the moment.

  How much longer can you take it? he thought. How much longer will it be until your entire existence crashes around you?

  No. He wouldn’t let that happen.

  He’d been on the brink of insanity before.

  Carmen pushed her arm forward.

  Odin looked down.

  In her hand she held a biscuit, fresh with what appeared to be honey on top.

  “Thank you,” Odin said, settling down on the floor next to the Dwarf.

  She reached down and set her hand over his shoulder.

  Outside, the rain continued on.

  “I can’t believe it,” Nova whispered, pressing his hand to one of the glass panes. “It seems like it’ll never stop.”

  “No kidding,” Carmen said.

  They both stood with their hands pressed to the windowpanes. The areas around their palms distorted, their breaths fogging the glass, they looked to be children fascinated by what nature could do. Gaia, or so she could be called, had bestowed upon them a great sadness in the days following the Elf’s passing. That alone was enough to twist Odin’s heart into several intricate knots, each of which seemed to tear at his being and push him even further into the ground.

  Just like the world is bearing down upon me.

  Fingers tight around the armrests, feet pushed as hard as they could be onto the floor, he leaned back in his seat and took a long, deep breath, then expelled it.

  The heat in his chest seemed to dissipate.

  He sighed.

  It came right back again.

  When would this horrible feeling end? Would he have to douse himself with water, throw himself into the rain, dive into a pool so dark and deep they said there was no end to it, or would it simply disappear in time, much like some old men said it would?

  The key to grief, some said, is to let it perspire from your pores.

  Perspire he may, the feeling didn’t seem to be leaving anytime soon.

  For three days he’d suffered in almost unbearable agony, twisting about in his seat and squirming beneath his sheets, and for three days he’d felt as though his world would suddenly and inexplicitly come to an end. His father gone, his friends torn away, his emotions crumbling and his existence falling apart—it would only take one more chisel in the great work of his life for everything to self-destruct.

  “Odin,” a voice said.

  Blinking, unsure of who had just spoken and whether or not the voice was male or female, he cleared his vision, then sought out his friends at the far side of the room. Carmen and Nova stood looking at him with wide eyes and stiff, unsure frames.

  Which one? he thought.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, tilting his head down, then up again. “What is it?”

  “I asked if you were all right,” Nova said.

  “No. I’m not.”

  “I know we keep asking and we’ve already said it before, but you know we’re here if you need us,” Carmen said, hopping down from her place on the massive windowsill and crossing the short distance between the two of them. “You want a hug?”

  “I guess.”

  He kneeled down, wrapped his arms around the Dwarf, then sighed.

  How he would make it through this monsoon was beyond him.

  “I want to go back to Ornala,” Nova said.

  The three of them sat around the table in the office Odin had taken to calling home. Candles lit, wicks flickering in the faint draft ebbing from beneath the doorframe, Odin watched his friend with calm, unsure eyes and tried to make out just what it was that lingered beneath the surface. He obviously longed for his family, for the company of his wife and the guidance of his father-in-law, but did that mean that he wanted to leave now, in spite of everything that was currently transpiring?

  I don’t know, he thought, and I’m not so sure I want to know.

  “We can’t do it in the rain,” Odin said, placing his hands on the table. “You know how dangerous it is to travel in this kind of weather.”

  “Trust me, Odin—I nearly died the first time I met you in this kind of shit.”

  “I say we wait,” Carmen said.

  “You’ll be coming back with us?” Odin asked, seeking her eyes out at the far end of the table.

  “Well… yeah. Not much I can do right now.”

  “You don’t want to go home?” Nova frowned.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to,” the Dwarf said. “It’s just that I currently have no way of getting back there. It’s not like I can go back with the Dwarves or anything. That would be a trip unto itself.”

  “I guess.”

  “I plan on returning by boat when I can,” Carmen shrugged, hopping up onto the table and taking her seat atop of it, legs crossed and heels of her boots in the air. “Right now though, it doesn’t seem like I have any other option other than to stay with you. I mean, yeah—I could always brave it and go alone, but I’m scared of horses, too small to ride one by myself, and only one person. I can’t hunt on my own because I don’t know how to shoot. And besides—I hate to say it, but even though I’m a great
fighter, I can’t take a pack of bandits on my own.”

  “I understand.” Odin nodded and turned his attention to the Bohrenian man. “Nova,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I… I don’t think I can leave—at least, not now.”

  “We’ll have to move on sometime, buddy.”

  Did he really just say that? Odin thought.

  Could Nova have really just delivered the finality of it all—that now, no more than just a few brief days after his death, it was time to stop mourning Miko and push forward in their lives?

  “I don’t understand,” Odin said, easing his hands around the side of the table and locking his fingers around the square of the frame.

  “We can’t mourn him forever.”

  “You don’t understand, Nova.”

  “I understand completely, buddy. I lost my father when I was your age.”

  “But you… you at least had time to know him.”

  “Did I, Odin, or was I just too oblivious to realize that the people we love can’t live forever?”

  He was an Elf, he thought. If that damn bastard wouldn’t have… wouldn’t have—

  Tears snaked down his face and dripped onto his trousers.

  “I know how hard this must be for you,” Nova said, “because let me tell you, it’s hard on me too, because that man was like a brother to me, but sometimes we just have to keep moving and push the past aside.”

  “This isn’t my past, Nova. This was my future.”

  “I’m sorry, Odin, but I have a family to get back to.”

  “What do I have?” Odin asked, standing. “What do you think I have, Nova?”

  “You have Ectris. He’s been more of a father to you than Miko ever was.”

  “Miko was my friend.”

  “Maybe you should go back home,” Nova said. He, too, stood and pressed his arms flat against his sides, sliding his thumbs into his pockets and drumming his fingers along his hips. “At least there you can recover and mourn in peace.”

  “I don’t want to go back home.”

  “Then what do you want to do, Odin?”

  “I honestly don’t know. I just want to sit here, figure things out, then move on with my life.”