The Brotherhood: Blood (17 page)

When he scanned the room to find only a single, dirtied mattress—which likely stank of sweat, tears and even blood—Odin crossed the distance between him and it, settled down atop its surface, then stared at the door and began to cry.

How could such a thing—such a small, unexpected
gift—
have landed him into one of the most frightening situations anyone could possibly imagine?

Although no answers lay in easy reach, and while the single window set into the tower at his side seemed to shine light on his very situation, Odin could only bow his head.

It couldn’t be—it just couldn’t.

After coming all this way, was this really what his life would amount to—imprisonment, isolation, and for all he could describe, arrest?

I didn’t do it,
he thought, tears spilling down his cheeks and revealing rivers of flesh through the mess of blood and snot on the lower half of his face.
I didn’t do anything! I didn’t… I…

Rather than continue on with his thoughts, he reared back his head and screamed.

Not a sound, he imagined, could be heard in the outside world.

Chapter 2

Long, hot, miserable, painstakingly-brutal in its efforts to push him down even further than he already was—the man raised his eyes to look at his fellow companions in the field and found himself dreaming of home and the sweet bed that would rest beneath him.

Ah,
he thought, sighing as a cool wind blew in from the northern highlands and gently whispered across his arms.
Yeah. That’s it.

The sun began to set in the eastern part of the sky and slowly but surely the men in the fields began to pack up their belongings and leave. In response to this sudden migration, much like birds when flying from the north to the south, Nova set his garden hoe over his shoulder, stepped out of the near waist-deep dirt and mud, then began to make his way back into town—toward, where, his house lay on the far hill, content and alone away from most everyone else in the village.

While he walked, making his way along the road and toward the place he called home, he took notice of the semblance of humanity as he passed by families and children greeting the men who had toiled in the sun-soaked fields all day. Women, kissing their husbands; children, grabbing their father’s pantlegs; dogs, barking and dancing beneath their master’s feet—it would have appeared as though this entire community was driven by nothing more than family, a fact that, while pleasant to see, made him feel even lonelier than he had in the past year.

Father,
he thought.

The old man’s death had not come as a surprise, but with its violent ferocity and its sudden implication within his life, it had taken all the more strength and willpower than he could possibly imagine to make it through the past year. Even remaining in that house, old and simple, seemed to stir harsh memories from the grave, almost as if his father were returning from the dead to haunt him each and every night.

From the corner of the street, a woman lifted her head and offered a simple smile, though made no move to wave.

Nova bowed his head.

You’ll be ok, in the long run,
he thought, hoping what the other men of the village had told him was true.
You’ll find someone, someday.

Sometimes, he couldn’t stand waiting.

On those long, hard days in the field, ‘someday’ seemed much too far away.

He wanted a wife more than anything—desired, above all else, to hold a woman in his arms and whisper to her that things would be fine: that the world, as horrible and violent as it was, would not open up and swallow the both of them whole. It was for this reason that when he arrived at home and began to disrobe he fell into the blankets before the fireplace and curled around himself his sheets as tightly as he could, already knowing in his heart and mind that tonight would be much colder than it had been in a very, very long time.

Will it rain,
he wondered,
or will it just be cold?

Either way, he couldn’t allow his conflicted emotions to control him, less he succumb to a horrible fit of anxiety that was likely to make him cry himself to sleep once more.

Nervous, unsure and even more frightened for the fact that he seemed so ready to cave in onto himself, Nova found himself looking toward the far right wall—where, upon its surface, his most prized possession lay. A scythe, propped up on three prongs, lay directly beneath the window, while three rubies inlaid within the blade caught the last bit of the sun’s fading light and cast it across the room in brilliant shades of scarlet.

Once upon a time, his adoptive father had taken his three most honorable pieces of jewelry and created that very weapon. While only a year had passed from this date, and while his father’s death seemed all the more present in his life, Nova couldn’t help but wonder, in but a moment’s notice, that the man would walk in from tending to the outside chores and greet him as he always did come the time he returned home from work.

Tears burned at the corners of his eyes.

Nova sighed.

“I miss you,” he said, a stray tear sliding from the corner of his eye. “Even though you weren’t my real father, you were the next best thing I could ever had.”

Resigning himself to his tears, Nova bowed his head into the pillow and closed his eyes.

In that moment, he prepared for the fate of sleep, hoping it would come sooner rather than later and pull him into the depths of nothing.

Early the next morning, he woke to an aching back and muscles that screamed whenever he used them. Rising, stretching, groaning and moaning over the aches in his body, he thanked the Gods that he had not the need to work in the field today and gathered his dirty clothes from around him before making his way to the door—where, around the back of his home, he would settle himself into the pool of vacant water and bathe to cleanse the dirt and sweat from the day before away.

After letting himself outside, he took but a moment to consider his distant surroundings and let out a deep breath of air.

So early in the morning—before dawn, it seemed, and at a time where the only light in the sky existed in hues of blue and grey—not a soul would be awake, giving him the sanctity and privacy he would need to bathe.

Rounding the house, taking a few moments every few seconds to consider his surroundings and the rocks that bordered alongside the hill, Nova stepped up to the pool, pressed his big toe into the water, then watched as a series of ripples extended toward the far side of the water until, eventually, they all but disappeared in the cracks of rocks that branched out over the skirts of the watering hole.

Here goes nothing,
he thought.

He settled himself in with practice he’d come to learn over his life in living on the top of the hill with his father, first by bracing his arms against either side of the pool, then by lowering himself in as slowly as possible, careful not to slip for fear of cutting himself and dirtying the one source of water that could truly be used for bathing. Beneath his feet, a current, swift and strong, guided fresh water from beneath the ground, though where it came from he couldn’t necessarily be sure, though his father had once said that there were a series of underground rivers that would, one time or another, eventually stop running.

There can’t be water forever,
Patrus Eternity had once said.

Nova shook his head.

Sinking in until all but the tip of his head was submerged, he closed his eyes and waited.

Not a sound seemed to exist beneath the depths of the pool, save for the current that whisked beneath him and created a sound much like a man gargling water fresh and tainted with salt.

It couldn’t have been a more peaceful situation.

Reluctant to rise, Nova made way to push himself out of the water, but stopped when a long pair of legs greeted his vision.

What the—

“Oh!” the woman cried, taking a few steps back as Nova emerged from the pool. “I’m so sorry, I—”

The rest of her words were lost, as in staring upon her face, Nova found himself captivated by the one and only woman throughout the entire village he fancied. His eyes, wandering, traveled the length of her long, thin legs, to the skirt of her dress that billowed in the breeze, then to her chest—where, though not amply-endowed, her breasts lay small and focused, full and round. Perhaps the most striking of her features, however, was her face. Slim, more over-shaped than anything, crafted with high cheekbones, a small, perky nose and dusted with freckles—she appeared as though a virginal goddess sent from the Heavens to tempt him with her beauty, though in that moment Nova could find nothing but a swell of unease rising in his chest.

Be calm,
he thought.
You have absolutely nothing to worry about.

Why he had nerves he couldn’t necessarily be sure, as in that moment he had less to be uneasy about than she did. Coming across a man unexpectedly in a pool, much less a naked one, surely had to have been an embarrassing sight, one of which could have easily swelled the most uneasy of emotions within anyone’s heart.

“It’s all right,” Nova said, pulling himself out of the water only for her to blush at his nakedness. “You didn’t know anyone lived up here?”

“No,” she said, shying her gaze away from his nudity. “I didn’t.”

While Nova dressed, he tried his best to put on the best aura of ease as humanly possible, but found himself all the more embarrassed for the mayor’s daughter in the process. After he finished, he turned his attention first from Katarina, then to the town beyond, which had since began to rise and make their way throughout the day.

“Are you all right?” she asked, turning her head up to look at him when he was finally dressed. “I’m sorry I disturbed you. If you’d like me to leave, I can—”

“You haven’t bothered me. I was just bathing.”

She said nothing. Nova reached out to touch her, but stopped halfway through the process. The idea of such personal intimacy between a commoner and a woman of her status would have seemed dirty, so he chose to keep his hand at his side and instead offered a smile instead.

“I should get going,” she said, turning to leave. “I’m so sorry mister—”

“Eternity,” he said. This time, he managed to set a hand on her shoulder without feeling uneasy about it. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“I don’t.”

Her words, nearly a whisper, surprised him. Normally her tone of voice was mush stronger than that of which she’d normally spoke.

Does she…

After readjusting his shirt across his chest, he fell into pace with her and began to walk down the steep incline that led to the primary road throughout the village. Along the way, both of them received strange looks from their fellow townspeople, but neither of them returned the gesture. Any reciprocation on their behalf would surely just cause gossip, if not full-blown, untrue rumors.

“So,” Nova said, drawing his word out to get her attention. “What were you doing all the way on the other side of town?”

“I wanted to take a walk,” the young woman said, turning to look upon him with her most-beautiful crystal-blue eyes. “I never intended to go through the village, but I guess I just started walking and didn’t stop until I had nowhere else to go.”

“I do that too sometimes. Your mind gets to wandering when you walk and you don’t really pay attention to the things around you, just where you think you’re going.”

Whether she intended for him to hear what she said he couldn’t be sure. The fact that she wished to remember his name filled him with a sense of pride that he felt he would not have been able to shake even if he attempted to.

Here I go again,
he thought, distracting himself from the curves of her body.

Soon, they’d be leaving the main road and splitting off onto the country path—directly toward the mansion that both Katarina and the mayor’s family lived in on the outskirts of the city, shielded from the public in throes of thorns and iron.

“Why did you walk so far by yourself?” Nova decided to ask. “It’s dangerous this early. No one would have heard you if something happened.”

“My father said the same thing,” she laughed. “He’s told me time and time again that he’ll send a stable hand with me should I want to walk, but I need my space sometimes too.”

While he didn’t particularly agree with her ‘need for space,’ he could understand her point, or at least try to. In all his life he’d never once been under the scrutiny of an unruly father—a man whom, technically, could have been considered a nobleman. His own adoptive father had given him free reign of the town and surrounding land. He couldn’t imagine having to be constantly watched.

“Well, we’re almost here,” Katarina said, stopping near the gate where directly behind it two rows of roses lined the road leading up to the house. “Thank you, Mister Nova. I appreciate your company and your help.”