The Brotherhood: Blood (99 page)
“I’m fine,” Odin smiled. “Where were you?”
“Eating. Why?”
“I woke up earlier and neither of you were here.”
“Oh,” the older man frowned, settling down at the end of the bed. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine.” Odin pushed himself up. He turned his attention to Parfour. “You ok?”
“I’m ok,” the boy smiled, brushing his bangs out of his eyes.
“Looks like someone needs a haircut.”
“Maybe a little bit.”
Chuckling, Odin threw his legs over the side of the bed and rubbed his eyes. Not sure if he’d actually fallen asleep after checking on Miko, he took a moment to contemplate his current state of mind before rising and crossing the room.
“Is he ok?” Nova asked, setting a hand on his shoulder.
“I think so,” Odin nodded, reaching down to set his hand over the Elf’s. “He hasn’t woken up.”
“It’s better he sleeps anyway.”
“I know.”
“Don’t worry, Odin—he’ll get up eventually. Something like this isn’t going to keep him down for long.”
Hopefully not.
The idea of the blade having been laced with poison was never far from his mind. Though he’d never found any power, liquid or residue while cleaning the Elf’s wound, that ddn’t mean there hadn’t been any present. With no knowledge of poison, how to make it or what it looked like, he could’ve easily missed something without knowing it.
I should’ve had the healer clean the wound for me.
Nothing could be done about it now. His one mistake could cost the Elf his life.
“What happens if he dies?” Odin asked, looking over his shoulder at Nova.
“He won’t.”
“What if he does though?”
“He’s not going to die, Odin. Besides—what makes you think he will anyway?”
“I don’t know if there was any poison on the blade.”
“No one does.”
“I should.”
“What are you—”
“I cleaned his wound, Nova.” The silence that followed forced tremors in Odin’s heart. “If he dies,” he continued, tightening his grip on the Elf’s hand, “it’ll be my fault, because I was too stupid to look for anything.”
“You can’t blame yourself.”
“I’m becoming a
knight,
Nova! How can I
not
blame myself?”
“You were worried,” Parfour murmured.
Both Odin and nova looked up.
“You can’t blame yourself for being worried,” the boy said, taking a few steps forward. “You wanted to make sure he was all right, so you brought him down here and did what you were supposed to.”
“Parfour,” Odin began. “That’s not the point. I’m becoming a knight. I’m supposed to know these things.”
“Who said?”
“I—”
“The kid has a point,” Nova said. “Miko never taught you anything about poison.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It does when you’re blaming yourself for not knowing anything about it.”
Odin shook his head. Stepping back, he turned and started for the door, but stopped. The Elf’s low, steady breathing petrified him.
His wound was still fresh when I cut myself,
he thought, looking down at his hand.
If there’d been a poison on it, I’d be sick by now.
“Odin?” Nova asked.
“Yeah?”
“Everything ok?”
“Yeah,” Odin said, taking a deep breath. “I think it is.”
“How is everything?” Icklard asked, absently kicking a rope out of his way as they made their way across the deck.
“Everything’s fine,” Odin said, sliding his hands into his pockets. “Better than I thought it would be, anyway.”
“You expected him to get sick, didn’t you?”
“A little.”
“Just because someone stabs you doesn’t mean they’re smart enough to use poison,” Domnin said, pausing to watch a flock of seagulls pass overhead. “Besides—from what you’ve said, it seemed like the attack was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Odin shrugged. “At least, I hope so.”
“Even if they do say you kidnapped the kid, at least you can say you were attacked by them.”
“I highly doubt they’d believe we were ‘attacked,’” Odin said, enunciating the word for affect. “Especially since only one of us was hurt.”
“Either way,” Icklard said, “your knight master was still injured. That’s assault, attempted murder if they were trying to kill him.”
“Which they probably were,” Domnin sighed. “Look, Odin—I don’t think you have a whole lot to worry about. I mean, yeah—your knight master’s laid up and all, but there’s no way in hell a judge is going to think you kidnapped the boy, especially if he was raped.”
“He was,” Odin mumbled.
A gull squaked overhead, then dove toward the water. A splash later, it pulled a fish from the sea and took off as fast as it could, its companions close behind.
“How close are we to the mainland?” Odin frowned.
“Hardly at all,” Icklard said.
“They must be coming from the islands then.”
“Why do you ask?” Domnin frowned.
“Just wondering,” Odin said.
With gulls so close, he couldn’t help but long for home.
The Elf’s eyes fluttered beneath their lids as he slowly came to. Like a dormant vessel just awakening for the first time in over a thousand years, his body transformed into a construct of movement. His lips pursed, drawing breath of the living world; his fingers flexed, strumming chords of unsought agony; his chest rose, then fell as lungs expanded, then contracted. Throughout all this, the movement beneath his eyelids continued to intensify. What was once only a slight tremble soon became a flurry of activity. Every part of the sleeping being’s body started moving. Muscles flexing, extremeties flushing, nostrils flaring, lips pursing and eyes twitching—Miko’s tongue darted from his mouth to wet his lips, greasing dried, cracked skin with saliva of the gods, while his teeth clicked to match the taut stretching of his neck.
Immortality seemed beautiful when presented in such illustrious ways.
For those ignorant of drawbacks, anything could be beautiful.
While Odin continued to watch his knight master react to the happenings of his body, unsure what to do and unwilling to leave his side, Parfour and Nova stood at the ready. Parfour stole into the washroom to run and purify water. Nova remained near the threshold, hand on the doorknob for fear that something worse would happen.
“Odin,” Nova said. “We need to go get someone.”
“
We?”
“You know what I’m talking about!”
“No I don’t!” Odin snapped.
The Elf convulsed and was nearly thrown from the bed.
“Parfour!” Odin screamed.
“PARFOUR!”
“Get water!” Nova cried, thrusting the door open and throwing himself out of the room.
The boy ran into the room with a bucket of water dangling from his grasp, nearly tripping in the process. A rag in hand, he wet the cloth and passed it to Odin. “What’s happening to him?” Parfour asked, grimacing as Odin pressed his weight into the Elf’s chest.
“I don’t know,” Odin said. “Here—hold it.”
“What?”
“What do you think? The cloth!”
Commotion in the hallway drew Odin’s attention from the frantic activity beneath him. “HELP!” he screamed, desperately fighting to keep Miko from throwing himself out of the bed. “SOMEONE GET A HEALER!”
The men in the hall—strangers to Odin, but possibly saviors to Miko—peeked into the room, saw a man thrashing about on the bed, then took off.
“Sir,” Odin said, taking slow, deep breaths to try and calm himself down. “Sir.
Sir.
Listen to me.”
Miko bucked. Parfour caught a blow to the side of his head and went tumbling into the walls, screaming as his swollen eye impacted into the ship’s hard wood.
“
STAY BACK!”
Odin screamed, straddling the Elf’s waist. “Get out of here Parfour!”
“But—”
“
GO!”
The boy took off without another word.
“
Sir,”
Odin said, taking hold of his knight master’s wrists and pressing them into the bed.
“Listen to me.
It’s all right. Nothing’s going to happen to you. It’s me: Odin, your squire, your friend!”
For a brief moment, Miko’s protests ceased.
In the time that Odin let his guard down, he loosened his hold on the Elf’s wrists and sighed, content with the knowledge that things had settled down.
The Elf bucked again.
Odin let out a startled gasp as Miko’s chest slammed into his own, driving the breath from his lungs and making every part of his upper body go numb.
What?
A moment later, pain flared throughout his chest, driving sobs from his throat and tears from his eyes.
“Pease!
It’s
me! Stop fighting!”
Nova burst into the room. “Get off!” the man roared, throwing Odin off the bed with one arm.
“MIKO! STOP! YOU’RE HURTING PEOPLE!”
The Elf’s eyes shot open. A quick burst of air entered his lung before he collapsed into the bed. “What happened?” Miko breathed.
Nearby, Jerdai, the healer and the mage brothers looked in in question.
“I don’t know,” Nova said, shaking his head.
Miko closed his eyes.
He slipped into sleep.
“Sir?” Odin asked, grimacing as his knight master’s eyes began to flicker. “Can you hear me?”
“Hmm?” the Elf mumbled.
“I asked if you could hear me.”
The Elf opened his eyes.
Odin blinked.
All right,
he thought, taking a deep breath.
Does he know what’s going on?
“Odin?” Miko frowned.
“Are you all right, sir?”
“Yes. I’m fine. Why?”
He doesn’t remember.
Taking a deep breath, Odin set his hands on his thighs and leaned back in his seat. All previous forms of tension erased from his mind, eradicated like creatures unpleasant and a menace to society, he took a moment to console himself with his current situation before he leaned forward, heart fluttering and hamstrings loose. “Do you remember anything?” he asked.
“About what?”
“About anything,” Odin said. “Anything after you fell asleep?”
“No. I… I’m afraid I can’t say I do.”
“All right.”
“Did something happen, Odin?”
“It’s nothing for you to worry about.”
“If something happened,” the Elf said, starting to push himself up, “you need to—”
“Not now, sir.” Odin pressed a hand to Miko’s chest to prevent him from rising any further. “Please, lay down. You’re still hurt.”
“As I can tell.” Miko settled back onto the bed and pressed an arm against his forehead. His eyes scanned the ceiling, as if searching for something, before they returned to Odin. “Will you tell me what happened if I stay still?”
“You—” A movement in the corner of the room distracted him, but only for a moment, as he soon realized it was only Parfour. “Earlier,” he said, “around noon, you woke up. At least, I thought you did. Nova was worried that something was happening to you, but I was convinced everything was all right, that you were just waking up because of the way you were stretching. Then… when you arched your back and nearly threw yourself off the bed, I screamed for Parfour to get a bucket of water and Nova bolted out of the room.”
“What happened then?”
“You wouldn’t stop. I put a hand on your chest and pressed my weight against you while Parfour held the wet rag against your head. I thought you might’ve just been overheating and trying to get the blankets off, so I thought the water would work. Then, when I tried to tell you everything was all right, you lashed out and hit Parfour in the head.”
“His eye,” the Elf whispered. “Is he—”
A second, briefer movement caught Odin’s attention.
Easing forward as though something horrible would happen at any moment, Parfour emerged from the shadows of the darkened room and edged toward the bed.
In the waning light of the midafternoon sun, the beginnings of a fresh bruise could be seen blossoming out from his eye, curving around the base of his skull until it disappeared into his sand-blonde hairline.
“I’m sorry, Parfour,” Miko said, extending a hand toward the boy. “You know I would never intentionally hurt you.”
“I know sir,” Parfour whispered, taking the Elf’s hands and admiring its smooth, nearly-flawless surface. He kept his head bowed, almost as if he were afraid of the creature’s intense gaze, before returning his attention to Miko. His eye seemed worse in light dull and without true color. “You took me out of that place.”