Untold Tales (6 page)

“I thought it was my cock.”

“The superior mind to be sure,” she purred. All at once, the playfulness fled, and was replaced with a burden—a great weight that he felt pressing keenly on his own shoulders. With a sigh, she rested her forehead against his chest. Oenghus felt her weariness and despair as if it were his own.

“What do you need, Yasine?” he whispered her true name.

“Swear to me.”

“You have my love.”

“I need your obedience.”

In reply, Oenghus brought his lips down hard and fierce over hers until the breath left her lungs. When the couple emerged for air, Oenghus growled, “I bow to no one—not even you.”

“You’ve gotten on your knees frequently enough.”

His mind went blank. And she hid a laugh against his neck. Somewhere during the kiss, her feet had left the ground, and he had no intention of putting her back.

“The Fate of countless realms depends on your obedience.”

“I make my own Fate,” he boasted.

“I need your seed.”

Oenghus blinked. “Now?” His voice had gone very suddenly hoarse.

“So easily distracted.”

“By you,” he agreed.

“Any female. Frequently. Isn’t that one of your Oathbounds out there?”

“That was centuries ago—we have children,” he added, feeling as if he were climbing a slope of very small pebbles. He set her back down. “It’s not as if I see much of you.”

“You never stay long.”

Oenghus’ head throbbed. “Don’t bloody mention—” he cut off when he saw her smile. “You’re teasing me, aren’t you?”

“I’ve never tired of seeing you flustered, my love.”

“That, and you’re stalling for time.”

“Time is the one thing we don’t have,” she sighed, glancing at the door, and then to his eyes. “I know you well. You are not a man who stands aside—no matter the name you bear.”

“Never,” he agreed.

“I need your courage, your will, your faithfulness.” There was a haunted look in her eye, one that stilled his flippant reply about her growing list of demands. “This realm is lost, Oenghus. It is broken. What was done cannot be changed; what was broken cannot be mended—the fracture is too deep.”

“Stop speaking in riddles.”

“Trust me, my rock,
please
,” she whispered like a brush of wings over his heart. “Support me, anchor me, be my strength—for once, I beg of you in the coming days, to stand still and do not react. Let them take me to the Emperor.”

“I don’t understand, Yasine. You sound like the Scarecrow.”

“By the Light, I hope not, he is as broken and fractured as this realm.” Mist clouded her eyes. “There must be a child, between you and me, and then let this body go. Let me die.”

The door flew open, slamming against the stone, nearly jarring the oak from its hinges. Oenghus Saevaldr ducked beneath the frame and glowered at the waiting women. The twitchy acolyte fingered her trigger and the other paladins rested a hand on their weapons.

Morigan frowned.

Without a word, Oenghus stomped down the hall to the winding stairway, leaving the Sylph kneeling beside her thriving lemon tree. The swish of Morigan’s skirts caught up with his long strides half way down the stairwell.

“Oenghus?”

He did not stop.

Let me die.
There had been something in her words—not the cycle of the Spirit River and the chance of rebirth—but something permanent.

An iron hand drew him up short with authority. “Oen,” Morigan snapped, “if you do not tell me what is going on I am going to drop you to the floor.” He stopped at the bottom of the stairwell. Oenghus blinked down at the healer, who looked about to make good on her word. “I’m beginning to worry that the nymph managed to put an enchantment on you. What
is
wrong?” Morigan whispered for his ears alone.

Footsteps were traveling down, towards them. There was not much time to explain.

Oenghus gripped her shoulder. “I know her, Mori.”

“How?”

“It’s ill luck to speak of such things.” His hand tightened. “You know of my dreams.”
 

Understanding sparked in her eye. “I see.” And she did. One did not spend sixty years, on and off, as Oathbounds without knowing something of the other’s nocturnal disturbances. “What now?”

“I am going to take care of the taint.”

“She told you how to stop it?”

He ignored the question. “I need your best ward.”

“Oenghus,” she warned. “You’re not going out there alone.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You need me to replenish the ward,” she argued. The footsteps were nearing, and he turned, walking towards the exit with Morigan matching him stride for stride.

“You’ve been on your feet for a day and a night.”

“So have you,” she countered.

“I’m a berserker.”

“And I’m a mother,” she reminded. “Besides, you always make the worst decisions when you’re angry, Oen.”

He didn’t have an argument for that. Morigan knew his bull-headed blunders well. He searched for a counter reply and snagged on the first he could find. “You’ll slow me down.”

Morigan scoffed.

Oenghus seized a better reason and bared his teeth when she turned to wait. “I need you to guard the—nymph from these bloody zealots. Make sure they don’t leave without me.”

“The nymph belongs to the Emperor,” she reminded.

“We’ll see about that,” he growled.

“Are you planning on running off with her?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you thought it,” she surmised. “
Think
, Oen, please. If you go home with a stolen nymph, the Blessed Order will follow. Despite our daughter’s current disapproval of you, I doubt she’ll turn on you outright, but as the Clans Head of Nuthaan, siding with you could be worse. The clans might not agree with her decision to support you. Either way, we’ll have another war on our hands—be it an internal clans war or one with Kambe and the Blessed Order. Nuthaan will be defending three borders.”

The kinsmen locked eyes. There was twelve years of recent war between them, of blood and slaughter and screams of the dying. The paladins reached the Nuthaanians in the corridor, entering a tense silence.

“Think on that with the brain in your skull and not the one under your kilt,” Morigan whispered, placing a hand on his arm. Oenghus nodded, squeezed her hand, and stepped away, turning to face the Inquisitor.

“What did the nymph say?”

“That I need to stop the taint,” he told Ashe. Before she could question him further, he pushed his way through to the main hall, where the men were waiting. Ashe followed him out.

“You plan to go now?”

“Yes.”

“With how many men?”

“Me,” he grunted, planting himself in front of Gaborn. He held out a demanding hand, waiting for his war hammer and weapons.

“That’s suicidal, Oenghus,” Gaborn said.

“I’m a berserker,” he rumbled.

“Do you know where the gorge is, or for that matter, where it all began?” Morigan’s question gave him pause. He shifted, tugged his beard, and gestured in a northernly direction. Morigan sighed. There was years worth of sighing in that sound.

The Inquisitor and Knight Captain conferred briefly. Ashe’s eyes darted towards Oenghus, and when their heads came up, Keeling announced his plans to go.

“We’ll take Farin as well—he knows where the tree is.”

“Fine,” Oenghus grumbled. “But I don’t want to be caught out there at nightfall. Speed is our only chance.”

Keeling nodded his agreement, and began shedding the heavier portions of his armor. He turned to his underling. “Fetch Sgt. Farin.”

When all three were assembled and prepared, Morigan moved to Farin first, summoned the Lore and traced an intricate bind carefully over his boots. When the haggard scout shifted uncomfortably, she moved to the next man, repeating the process over Knight Captain Keeling. And finally, Oenghus.

After she tapped his boots, Morigan was worn, Oenghus could tell and he helped her stand. “Wait,” she said. Before Oenghus could protest, she traced an armor weave and touched his throat. The familiar sensation of hardening skin spread over his body like a cloak. The healer swayed on her feet and coughed into her hand. There was blood on her palm.

“Damn you, woman,” he growled.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Gaborn,” Oenghus barked. The captain hopped to the healer’s side.

“I’m not about to faint.” Morigan waved Gaborn away, and looked at Oenghus. “Come back with blood on your shield, and if you don’t, then piss in the ol’River for me. Enjoy yourself, Oen.” She slapped his arse for good measure and he bared his teeth at the familiar send off. “I’ll watch her,” she reassured, turning towards the stairway, only steadying herself once on Gaborn’s arm.

“Stubborn woman,” he muttered at her retreating bun. Oenghus Saevaldr swallowed his concern for both women, shouldered his targe, touched his sacred flask, and strode out of the temple with a Knight captain and scout on his heels.

OENGHUS
SAEVALDR
RAN
over the dead ground, the hills and slopes and the cracks in the earth. He ran from another life. And he raced towards one. Heart pumping, blood rushing, muscles stretching. He moved with the speed of a stallion and the stamina of an Auroch—a god among men, racing the sun.

The Nuthaanian hopped onto a grouping of large boulders and surveyed the skeleton trees. White mountains surrounded the bleak valley and the wind whipped from their peaks, cooling his skin.

A long rent in the earth wound its way north, slicing through the valley floor like a crack of lightning. Nothing stirred in the desolation except the waxy ground, roiling and bulging like a restless beast on the verge of hatching. Oenghus did not like the image that thought conjured. Eventually, maggots morphed into flies; what would these larger ones turn into? He tugged on a braid, and glanced over his shoulder. Keeling and Farin were dim dots on the horizon.

Impatient, he traced the runes on his war hammer
Gurthang
as he followed the gorge with his eyes. It reminded him of a Fjord. Flush against a glacier’s base, all tumbled and mixed with ice and earth from a recent landslide. Oenghus wondered what he would find in the bottom of the crevice.

Amid the forest of twisted deadwood, one lonely pine stood tall and white over the rest: the tree that Farin had pointed out from the ridge. Oenghus could wait—should wait—but he was restless. Irritated beyond words. The Sylph had asked the impossible of him and he needed to bash something before he exploded. The berserker was not known for his patience, nor his ability to stand aside and wait for others.

With wild abandon, he jumped from the boulder and sprinted down the slope towards the tall pine, feeling the stir of rage, the blind focus, the bloody haze—the now and nothing beyond.

The gorge was a scar on the land, like all the scars across the realms that had swallowed countless lives during the Shattering. He skirted its edge, glancing into the depths. The sun was pale and angled, far too weak to illuminate the blackness at the bottom, but it did touch the sides, revealing a mottled patchwork of black earth and stone.

Oenghus slowed to a trot, eyeing the tree ahead. The ancient, now dead pine, had held the essence of Life in its woody womb and birthed the Sylph into this realm—a different body, but the same spirit. The berserker shuddered at the thought, at her vulnerability and the danger to all that her presence brought. If something were to happen to her—not the body, but her spirit—the consequences would be far worse than the Shattering. Oenghus swallowed the fear, making it his own, and channeled it towards the pine.

The wood bulged and rippled as if it were alive. It would be ripe for the Void to feed, even on a memory of the Sylph’s presence.

Oenghus unhooked his hammer and began to chant with a voice that rumbled like thunder. The runes on his war hammer flared and he raised it with a shout, speeding towards the base of the white pine. He swung. Electrifying power slammed into the wood with a crack that rebounded off the watching mountains.

The tree burst. And Oenghus raised his shield as the sky turned black, blotting out the sun. The Spawn burst into the open air—to the light of day, was suspended in time for a heartbeat until gravity caught them up, and sent the maggots hurling towards earth. Thousands of wiggling carrion battered the Nuthaanian’s shield. Those that did not shrivel from sunlight slithered beneath the waxy shell of death.