The Axe and the Throne (7 page)

Determining that he was on the eastern cliffs, he estimated it would be six or so more miles south to reach his home. That was when the realization swept him. The Northmen had come from the south.

 

 

 

 

 

Many Years Ago

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I would let you die.” The words came from the silhouette of a man in the doorway just as something heavy flopped onto the dirt floor in front of her. “…But the Faith does not allow it.”

“I am sorry,” she cried. “Wait!” But the blinding rectangle of light folded in upon itself until gone—and with it, another day's worth of hope.

She crawled toward where the object had fallen and found it with her fingers. The top was warm and slick, the rest covered with fine dirt that had already turned to muddy paste.
At least it is fresh
, she thought as she wiped her fingers on her clothing and attempted to rub clean a portion of the raw meat.

The words were cruel but comforting. In the dark she was not afraid—not afraid of death at least. It was the tedium that was killing her. Day after day of no contact, no interaction, nothing to do save make mounds of dirt and knock them down again. It wore on her like a mortal disease. It was good to hear a voice, regardless of what was said.

She was alone in here, just her and her bucket, and there was not much joy to be gleaned from a bucket full of your own leavings. He would only take the bucket once a week, and by then it was near full. Each time the metal pail was swapped for a new one, she would use it to dig. She dug in the same spot by the rear wall, and each day she would get a little deeper through the near frozen ground. When she could hold back no longer, she'd be forced to use her bucket for its intended purpose and push all the dirt and rock back into its proper place. What he would do if he saw that she attempted escape, she did not venture to guess—she only knew it would not be good.

A scraping noise came from the door causing her to snap to attention. Dropping her meat to the ground, she raced to the door, and pressed her ear against it.

“Mother?” she whispered. “Is that you?”

Eternities passed as she waited for a reply. Sometimes she thought she heard weeping, but not today.

“Tell Father I did not mean to do it…and it will never happen again. Tell him it was an accident. Please.”

She pushed her ear harder against the cold wood, hearing nothing but her own breathing and heartbeat. After a while her ear began to ache, so she cupped her hands around it and listened that way.

“I will always use a flint, Mother. I promise. It was just so cold, and we were in a hurry. I did not mean to stray from the Faith. I am sorry for what I did.”

Her heart jumped as she felt a bump through the door. Someone had leaned against it or pushed away from it—she could not tell.

“Mother?”

She waited. Her muscles hurt from squatting the way she was for so long, but she endured.

“How is Enka?” she pleaded. “Did her sickness pass? Just scratch the door once if she has gotten better.”

She listened for the scratch that never came. As her muscles began to cramp and burn she was forced to sit, her back against the door. Crying did her no good. She had abandoned it after several weeks of wasted tears, but the anguish of desolation never went.
I would rather die than live like this forever.

“She is dead.”

Her mother's voice was so unexpected she believed it to have been imagined, but then it continued.

“Enka has gone, and I intend to follow. Know that it was your doing. Goodbye, Elise.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seated in her rocking chair, propped up with pillows, Elise stared out the window of her family's thatch-roofed home. Through the glass, a snowy valley could be seen. It stretched between mountains and was traversed by a stream that flowed gently past the house. So high were they in the mountains that when the rains fell the stream did not flood, but countless miles away it grew into a rushing river larger than imagining. Titon claimed their creek at the top of the world was the start of the mightiest river of the land. The Eos, he said, was so wide that a man could not swim across it, so plentiful that a fish could be speared by an arrow shot without aim, and that grasses grew along the banks so thick that goats could grow fat and produce milk year-round. All this was fantasy, she knew, yet in her heart she somehow believed him to be speaking truth. For all the years they had spent together, she had never known him to tell a lie.

Everything she had she owed to Titon, a giant, fearsome, dangerous man, a man whose axe had taken countless heads—heads of foes and heads of friends—but never of those undeserving. He was the most rare and noble of men. He was the stone that formed her hearth. And she did not deserve him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He saw her there by the window, gaze transfixed on a single point in the distance, eyes never straying, rocking chair never moving. He marveled at how she had so well retained her beauty. Her stark-white hair cascading past her shoulders to her waist caught the light and shone with health in spite of her frailty.

“Ellie,” Titon said to his wife. To his men he spoke with booming authority that commanded respect, but to her he spoke gently. “Our two sons give me a pride I fear might anger the gods. Our youngest has grown with a speed I have never before seen. He has but fourteen years, and he may best me in strength before another two. He is a wolf among men and is yet still a boy.

“But Titon, the one the Mist Spirits tried to steal from us, the one we feared might never walk or learn to speak, his skill with bow and axe is without equal. Everything I show him, he knows before the lesson is done. He knew words on paper better than I, or even you, and that was before we thought to teach him. Every task I give him, he completes in some way of his own invention that takes half as long and is done twice better. If only I could task him with growing another head in height, he'd lead our clans into the South, steal the Eos itself and bring it back.”

Elise did not move or respond. Titon paced while he spoke, his wife continuing to gaze out the window without answer. He stroked his thick auburn beard as was his habit while thinking.

“What god was it that you took to bed while I was out hunting to make such a lad?” It was a joke Titon had the habit of repeating, one of many jokes he told as if for the first time, but none seemed to annoy her as much as this one. “Ah, it is just a jest. Do not be angry with me, Ellie. …But if you wish to rise and strike me, I would not be angry with you.”

He looked to his wife. He studied her for the smallest sign of motion, willing her to retaliate.
Get up,
he pleaded.
Please.
Minutes passed, yet she refused to move. He wiped at his eyes, breathed deeply, and hardened his face.

“The others will not follow him. They do not respect his size, and they fear his wits. Nothing can be done about it. We Galatai are a stubborn lot, though, are we not? I do not know how a pretty southern girl like you can put up with the likes of us.”

Titon stopped his pacing before the wall where his two-handed axe hung, hesitated, then removed it from its perch. Attempting to put his mind from the task, he examined the blade. It had seen more sharpening than use since his wife had stilled. It should have no trouble with her delicate neck.

It was the axe he'd used to kill many men, among them her father. By his sixteenth year, Titon was leading parties of Galatai south to raid the Dogmen villages. These were not just raids for food or supplies, these were raids fueled by hatred. Titon had come to despise Dogmen in earnest by what he'd borne witness to. Wolves and dogs tied to trees, beaten, starved, made to fight each other for scraps, all for the men's amusement—these were a people worth wiping from the land. The raping was also justified as far as Titon was concerned, though he no longer partook. The women certainly were not any less guilty than the men, and in fact most kennels were maintained by the
fairer
sex. The Dogmen's women were certainly pleasant enough to the eye, looking about the same as Galatai, if slightly shorter and more buxom. Titon's father had taught him that to rape a woman was to kill her soul, and to kill a man's soul one had merely to rape his woman. Titon had long ago vowed not to spare any Dogmen souls, and when he still led raids, his men had been happy to oblige.

There
were
limits to their debauchery, however. It was forbidden to take a Dogman as prisoner, be they man or woman. Galatai put chain to neither man nor wolf.

Whereas the Galatai's persecution of the Dogmen was checked by certain restraints, it would seem in contrast the Dogmen's impropriety had no bounds. On occasion, during raids in the cold winter months, Titon found the dogs chewing on the frozen remains of piles of starved children and perished elders. It was true that digging a grave during the winter was ten times as hard, but one could thaw the ground somewhat with a fire or at the very least place the body under a pile of river rocks. Titon's father said it was the true measure of a man whether he buried his fallen during the dead of winter, and as such Titon had always dug an even deeper hole in the frozen earth for his dead brothers, to show proper respect.

Almost equally offensive was that so few of the Dogmen fought to protect themselves. All Galatai, even the girls, were taught to use a bow and throwing axe at a young age and were expected to use them to defend their homes. These Dogmen had at most only one of every ten men take to weapon to defend what was theirs while the rest cowered inside. Titon found it beyond disgraceful.

Elise's father was one that hid, and he hid more than himself. After finding the man trembling in a corner, begging for his life, Titon, as he often did, began first to destroy his fancy home. It was not enough to kill these evil men. They had to also know that all they had was being ruined.

Her father was a rich man with a large home. Dogmen considered those who bred demon-dogs to be most valuable, and kennel owners tended to have the most wealth. Her father must have had over five-dozen dogs crammed into a small shed overrun with piles of shit and reeking of death from the stillborn pups left to rot or be eaten.

As Titon used Elise's father's head as a battering ram to remove some walls, he broke through to a hidden room. Large houses held large secrets he had learned, and this was not the first such room he had discovered within Dogmen homes. Titon let out a monstrous roar of laughter, eager to see what treasure was within. The room did not smell of gems and coins, however. It had the familiar stench of piss and shit like the kennels. In the center of the room he saw a girl on all fours, dressed in loose rags, chained to a spike in the ground as a dog or wolf might be. But Titon saw only wolf in this girl as she snarled and growled and snapped at him in defiance when he approached. She was a few years younger than he, and her long messy hair was as white as the fur of a Storm Wolf—save for the dirt in it.

The girl was wild and Titon could not conceive of a way to subdue her without the same disgraceful bindings used by the Dogmen, so he simply broke her chains and hoisted her to a shoulder, allowing her to claw and bite him until she tired. She had a fiercer stamina than expected, and she gave him some of his better scars that day, as well as removing part of an ear. Galatai wore their scars proudly, however, and ears were just fodder for frostbite the way Titon saw it.

“The feck are you doing with that Dogman bitch? You can't take any prisoners. Everyone knows that.” Edgur was five years Titon's senior and clearly resented being under the leadership of the younger man.

Among Galatai, one either followed his leader or killed and replaced him, but one did not speak to him as if he was a child. This was not the first time Edgur had been insubordinate either. Titon once found him bludgeoning dogs to death after Titon had given explicit orders that dogs were not to be killed without him present. Putting down the dogs was the hardest part of raiding for Titon, and though he saw the remnants of wolf in their eyes, he knew that once turned they could never be wolf again. Nevertheless, it was a duty he did not stray from. The dogs Edgur was killing were chained inside kennels and no threat to the men, but he was beating the life from them just the same and taking great pleasure in doing so. It was all Titon could do not to kill Edgur then, but he settled for a severe reprimand, hoping the shame would sort the man.

“This is no Dogman. Her mane is white as the Storm Wolf's coat—a sign from the Mighty Three perhaps. She was chained by the Dogmen much like a wolf would be. Do you see any chains on her now? She is not my prisoner, but she is mine.” Titon replied with all the authority of a clan leader despite his age.

“Does a Storm Wolf roll around in its own shit? Her mane is about as white as my arse after I've made a pile with nothing to wipe. That don't bother me though, she's fair enough. Let her down. We'll give her a ride, slit her throat, and be on our way then.”

Edgur was like to be expecting a chuckle from the other men, but a silence hung among those around. Even the squirming girl on Titon's shoulder seemed to quiet.

“You would seek to rape the woman your leader just laid claim to?” Titon glowered at Edgur in a way that meant he had no means of escape, not with an answer nor an apology.

A moment passed as the blood drained from Edgur's face, and he chuckled nervously. Titon's glare remained fixed on the man, but Edgur soon lowered his eyes, turned as if he were walking away, then grabbed for the axe at his belt. “I challenge you—”

His scream was interrupted by Titon's own axe making a wet sound as it split Edgur's skull, landing between the nose and left eye, planted firmly. The throw was quite difficult given Titon's cargo, but Titon rarely botched an axe throw—not when it mattered.

“Do any others wish to challenge Titon son of Small Gryn for the right to lead?” He posed the question with the woman still on his shoulder, vulnerable to attack but without fear. There were no such volunteers, nor did anyone else take issue with Titon's claim to the wolf woman. The action cost him more than Edgur, though. It made him many enemies among the leaders of other Galatai clans who believed he had broken a sacred law.

Titon squeezed the soft leathern bindings of his axe.
Ellie, what would you have me do? I fear your wish would be for me to speak to you softly, long into the night. To tell you how strong our boys have grown and how I still care for you. To hold your hand as we watch our last setting of the Dawnstar, then end your eternal purgatory.

Titon stared at the old axe in his hands as its image began to blur.
But I cannot.

And so Titon did the same as he had near every night for so many painful years. He sat with his wife in the small home he'd built for them by the creek at the top of the world. He talked to her long into the night as he held her hand, and they watched the Dawnstar disappear behind the mountains far to the west.