Cutter grunted, settling the pack on his shoulder as he rose from where he’d knelt. “I always know.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Revenge is a sour drink and no surprise considering its ingredients.
Hate and rage, pain and loss…how can it be anything else?
Yet, as sour as it is, as bitter, there is one more truth to know—
Men will never stop seeking it.
—Rodarian Dalumis, Poet, excerpt taken from “The Ramblings of Life from a Rambling Life”
He sat atop his horse, a massive beast with flanks rippling with muscle, and which stood a foot taller than any of the other mounts standing nearby. The beast had been a gift, long ago, from the Fey king, a king who was now dead and gone, a beast born in a kingdom that hardly still existed and that, in large part, thanks to him.
But it was not the magnificent beast beneath him of which he thought, not then. Now, as always, he thought of one thing and one thing only. Vengeance. He studied the scattered, broken bodies silently, his gauntleted hand flexing as if he might crush the object of his hatred in his grasp. He was not aware of this just as he was not aware—and would not have cared even if he had been—of the troubled looks his men shot him from a short distance away.
“Sire.”
Feledias Paterna, known as “Stormborn” to his men—thanks in part to the jagged birthmark, resembling a lightning bolt, which ran down one side of his face and, more recently, in part, to his temperament—turned to regard the scout. The man was covered in sweat, his dark pony-tailed hair lank with it despite the frigid temperatures this far north. He fidgeted anxiously in his saddle as Feledias watched him. “What?”
“T-they’re gone, sir. These here, it seems, were his work.”
No need to say who “he” was, for they all knew, no need for any of it, really, for any fool could see the man was gone just as any who had known him would have recognized the corpses and the attendant savagery as his work as clearly as any signature. And Feledias Paterna knew the man better than anyone else could have. After all, he was his brother. Or had been. Once.
He was tempted, then, to draw his sword from its sheath at his side and make his displeasure and annoyance clear by lopping off the scout’s head, but he resisted the urge. Barely.
After all, there were more important things to think about than some fool scout. He was close now, close to the vengeance he had sought for over fifteen years. The closest he had ever been.
“It seems he flees to the Black Woods,” the scout finished, licking his lips anxiously, though whether that anxiety came from fear of his prince’s famous wrath or from the woods themselves was unclear.
“Then we will follow him.”
There was an uncomfortable rustling from the men at that. “Sir,” his second-in-command, Commander Malex, said, easing his horse forward and away from the two dozen others, “perhaps it’s unwise to…that is, he knows the forest. He has been there before. And according to the terms of the concord, we are not to set foot inside the Black Woods. Perhaps we could set pickets, wait him out, or—”
“A coward’s course,” Feledias said, meeting his commander’s eyes. “If the beastmen and goblins do not like it, then their blood will be added to that of their kin which feeds the ground. But tell me, Malex, do you seek to deny your prince out of a child’s fear of bogeymen, or do you mean to deter me for another purpose? Do you work with him, Malex? Are you yet another traitor?”
The commander was, if nothing else, a brave man, a man who had ridden with Feledias and his brother on many campaigns, but brave or not, he blanched at that, his face going pale around his steel-gray beard and moustache. “No, Your Highness. I am now, as always, your loyal servant. Surely you know as much, for I have ridden with you for many years and—”
“You rode with him as well,” Feledias said, his eyes narrowing. Then, after a moment, his frown split into a wide smile, and he clapped the other man on one of his broad shoulders, a big man, Malex, with a back nearly twice as wide as Feledias’s own leaner frame. “Relax, Malex,” he said. “I only jest. I know well your loyalty, know and remember. Just as I know that your caution is only done out of love for me and not fear for yourself, nor loyalty to my brother. Isn’t that so?”
The man looked genuinely hurt at that, his broad features scrunching up. “Of course, sire.”
“Very well,” Feledias said, laughing. “And it is a love, a loyalty for which I am grateful. But now is not the time for caution, old friend. Now is the time for action. The time, as my brother was so fond of saying, for blood. Now come, ride with me, all of you. My brother’s execution has been a long time in coming—it is past time the sentence was carried out.”
And with that, he rode toward the Black Woods, the hooves of his massive charger kicking up great tufts of snow behind him. Those others—near fifty in all—who rode atop their own horses were his honor guard, his most trusted and skilled warriors, men—and two women—who had sworn their lives to him. Yet they glanced at each other, their expressions troubled, before finally turning to their commander who gave a single, gruff nod.
“You heard the prince—we go.”
And so they did, fifty horses, fifty men, charging behind their ruler, seeking the blood of the man who had driven him to madness, all of them entertaining the thought—the hope—that perhaps, when the object of their ruler’s hatred was vanquished, perhaps their prince would be the man he once had been.
CHAPTER NINE
I had the misfortune on campaign to walk beneath those great trees
Their branches dark, even in the
