C7 Chapter 7
The soldiers ate and drank well that night, holding the memories of their dead brothers and friends with them as they became drunk and ate their fill of beans. Most of the men were asleep an hour or two after the sunset, collapsing in the sand with cups in their hands.
Brenn wasn't one of those men, nor did he eat or drink anything that had come from Isaf. Brenn was a guest in Ulfhrem's huge tent, along with every other captain and officer in the army. He sat in silence and watched the prince laugh and tell stories about past raids and conquests.
The prince sat at a long wooden table at the back of the tent. To his right was Andreas Rygg, and to his left was Rolf Lier. Lier was a quiet, reserved man who kept his hair cut short and his fingernails clean. He hardly spoke unless he had something to say or was answering a direct question. He chewed thoughtfully and appeared to pay no attention to the prince's stories. In all, there were more than twenty captains in the tent with Ulfhrem, all from different parts of Eirmanlenidh, who ruled over large parts of the country and kept the king's peace.
Sitting with Brenn were some of his dagak'hotl. Tlamuq was the first to call their group by this name. He began referring to them as the bear-men after their victory at the gold mine in Danuras. There were five hundred dagak'hotl in all, give or take, and they all considered themselves brothers to the rest after what they had been through together. Brenn was the eldest brother to them. They had him to thank for their freedom and had followed him across the sea to the burning desert. None of them were at Ulfhrem's feast but for Tlamuq, the large dark Raven, and Dayl, Brenn's closest friend.
As the night grew late and plates grew empty, cups were filled, and laughter rose. Many captains nodded slowly in their seats, drooling into their beards that were already filled with beans and goat bits. Ulfhrem's table was the loudest and by far the drunkest. Ulfhrem and Rygg stood facing each other with goblets spilling over with pink wine, singing a song together about dragons and women. Their voices grew as loud as they could make them until the tune was imperceptible. When they finished, they drained their cups and laughed together, slapping each other on the back.
Brenn stood. ”My atheling,” he shouted. ”Captain Rygg.”
Many faces turned his way, and those who were napping started awake. The royal table remained boisterous.
”Atheling!” he yelled.
Ulfhrem paused with his cup at his mouth and looked over it at Brenn as wine spilled into his brown beard. He swallowed a mouthful and set his cup to the side. ”Reidr,” said the prince. Brenn felt a tone of sarcasm as the prince spoke his title. ”You've eaten but naught.”
”Not hungry, Aetheling.”
Rygg filled his cup and used it to gesture at Brenn. ”I beheld you not in the skirmish today, Ragnir. I'm right beamish to see you're alive and well.”
”I'm alive, Captain,” Brenn said. ”But not well.”
”Dear me.” Ulfhrem's eyebrows rose as he smiled. ”Feeling ill, Brenn? Would you like some hot mulled wine to allay your bowels?”
A low rumble of laughter spread through the tent.
Brenn ignored them all. ”Aetheling, I'm woeful because I had hoped you and I would become kinsmen, but I see now that that's unmightly.”
The laughter hushed, and Ulfhrem's smile became a smirk. ”And what is it that I'm meant to have done to betray the kinship of Reidr Brenn?”
”You onfell a village.” Brenn's voice was calm and steady. ”Scores of innocent lives were ended so that you could fret on goat and beans tonight. Isaf had no part in this war, and yet you struck them without cause. And if that weren't thorough, you were untruthful about it. How many captains here tonight brought their wymen thinking we were to meet the prophet in battle?”
Brenn looked around the tent, expecting to see faces that showed the same concern as his. Instead, he was answered with blank stares, indifferent stares, amused stares.
He blinked. ”None of you?” He looked back to Ulfhrem. ”I was the only one you twisted?”
Ulfhrem rolled his eyes. ”You came to a wye, Brenn. You were meant to leave your morals at home. In troth, I would never meld to you the day's how. I needed your bear-men weald the raid turned sour, and my wariness had rightwising. The prophet found us there, and his men would have waled us if it weren't for your big friend there and the other little angry one.”
Brenn made a look to his right where Tlamuq and Dayl sat. They spoke almost no Ekkioska, but the look in Tlamuq's eyes told Brenn that he knew he was being talked about.
”We were waled,” Brenn said to the prince. ”Hundreds of us forthfared to the Shatter, and they might have overlived if they had been prepared for a battle instead of a raid.”
”I've no will to hear this, Brenn.” Ulfhrem waved a hand and took a drink. ”It's war. There are no laws in war.”
”I had my inklings,” Brenn continued. ”Even back in Ekkio, I wondered if you were marching on Kammun to help the folk here, or if you would come to score renown in your father's eyes.”
Any hint of a smile on Ulfhrem's face disappeared as he stood. ”You will not speak to me in this way. I am your aetheling, and you have sworn trothness to me. If you weren't a Holder, I'd swear that you were chevesborn of a whore, and I would never guess that you were the brother of Leif and the son of Deohild, two of the most renowned men to ever have been born. Were they here today, they would rightly feel unworship by your behaving.”
”If my father and brother were here, the raid would never have happened in the first place. In fact, the wye would be over by now, and the prophet would have been undone weeks ago, maybe months.”
”Don't be so quick to frame your hird in a light of cleanheartedness, young reidr.” Ulfhrem pointed a thick finger across the table at Brenn. ”No man is without his flaw, and your father and brother did their share of frightful deeds while fighting the Gaeten; I behight you that. Raids beheve an army to keep them fed, to thin down the enemy, and to fill the cities with refugees until they run out of food and their gates burst open. Don't teach me wyecraft, boy. I've been at it since you were at your mother's tit, rest her soul.”
Brenn growled in his throat like a bear. ”You do unworship to yourself by unupholding the drovak as you have. They teach against needless heast, and all who kill for the win of it will be thrown from the Shatter into the formless nether.” He quoted the Dual-Path, knowing every man here had been taught from the book since they were children.
”And don't teach me my own lief!” Ulfhrem shouted. ”I'll not hear it from a trowless whelp! From a man who stands like a god in front of his men, letting them worship him without abeeting!”
”I have never boden to—”
”And you tell tales of meeting a god that was not Odlik.” Ulfhrem now paced around his table until he was on the other side, then stepped down from the raised section of floor where the table sat. ”You're an untrother. You unworship the Ragnir name, and now you're a lordswike for withsaking me in front of all my headmen.” The prince's eyes lowered to the sword at Brenn's waist, and Brenn gripped the leather-wrapped hilt, feeling its Power vibrate through him. Ulfhrem approached until the two men were mere feet apart.
”I'd kill you,” said the prince in a soft and thoughtful voice. ”Odlik knows I have no love or upholding for you, and more than else, I want that drovak-blade. If it weren't the most wicked of ungodly deeds to fell a Holder, then I would do it here in my own tent, cut your lonkfull head from your shoulders and let your blood soak into my tappets. Would that I could.”
Ulfhrem looked up from the sword and smiled at Brenn, and Brenn's teeth clenched. He could do it, here, in this tent...
”Brenn,” said a voice.
He looked up at Rygg, standing behind the royal table.
”Stell it away,” the captain said. ”Sit down. Please.”
Brenn chewed on the inside of his cheek, then realized he was holding the sword extended at his side, unsheathed. The silver blade reflected the lamplight and center cookfire of the tent and also shone with a strange light of its own. It vibrated and hummed with power, sending a low and sweet sound through the place. As Brenn held it, he heard the thoughts of each man in the tent.
...Odlik preserve...
...damn fool boy...
... shouldn't fight...
...traitor...
...dishonors his father...
...put it away put it away put it away...
The sword snapped back into its sheath, and the tent dimmed. The officers at their tables looked at Brenn with awe, fear, and disgust. Brenn felt naked in front of them.
”Sit down, please, Brenn,” Rygg said again.
Someone tugged at Brenn's trousers, and he looked down. Dayl frowned at him from the floor. Brenn lowered himself and sat beside his friend, lowering his head from the gazes of everyone else.
Ulfhrem made a slow walk back to his seat at the table. He refilled his goblet, drank, sighed, and said, ”Since the winsome mood of the evening has been awrack, I ween we can move on to other hereto if some of us are yet sober...” He looked to his left at Lier and the man beside him, the drovak priest.
”Hreidar, as they have already been brought into mooting, pray tell us if you've any whating from the minds of Odlik or his siblings.” The prince took a patient drink as the old man stood from his chair. Rolf Lier put a hand on the priest's arm to steady him.
”My aetheling,” said the drovakthyr, ”Odlik is still of late. He holds not to this kind of heast, as the young reidr has aforesaid. Give me loading, your grace. The last I heard from Odlik was a year gone, our first night in Lesh Kalae. We were yet in our ships on the Karsya and had just overfared the land's border, headed to Dhuinagai. That night when I slept in my hammock, Odlik came to me in a sweven and spoke of many things. Most of them he bade me not to speak aloud to any man, kingly or ameanly.”
”And you tell me this only now?” asked the prince. ”Are you aware that you're my thyr, and that the drovak speak to you only to speak to me? Whatever Odlik says to you, Hreidar, you've sworn an oath to tell me.” Ulfhrem shook his head and casually wiped away a plate of chewed goat bones from the table so he could lean forward. The plate crashed to the floor.
”This wouldn't be the first time you've withheld an errand from the drovak,” Ulfhrem went on, ”keeping your meanings to yourself until the aftertime that the drovak have made known to you has already happened, and then you can stand before me and say, I knew all along that this would befall! I won't ask you about today, but I ken in my heart that you foresaw the skirmish and might have warned us to prepare to meet the prophet in battle, yet for some wit, you didn't tell me. So tell me now, drovakthyr! What did Odlik make known to you a year gone?”
The priest bowed his head in apology and placed frail hands on the table in front of himself. ”Only this, Aetheling: This wye must end quickly, or else more men will fall than any of us can imagine, on both sides, and others who have no whit at all in this wye. Odlik told me that the prophet wishes for this wye to end, same as we do, and that Kammun does not have food anight for its people to last the month. But then, my atheling will bethink, neither do we have provisions anight to last us another fortnight.”
Ulfhrem sighed and shrugged. ”That's of little anent. Kammun is closed to the fold. She hasn't opened her gates since we came to this weasten, and the trade ships are too afraid to sail this way while we're atstalled across from the city. Kammun is filled with ackled women and children and elders, pouring in from neighboring villages and towns, steeping her to the point of bursting at the bricks. But the small towns belapping Kammun are ours to plunder for food and stock as we will, and we have no need to reck ourselves about being starved out of the wye ere the prophet starves himself.”
”You can't be earnest,” Brenn mumbled.
The tent fell silent. Ulfhrem returned his gaze to Brenn, sitting with his two friends.
”Please don't make me do you dere,” said the prince. ”I need you and your men.”
”There it is.” Brenn stood.
Dayl hissed in Jongua, ”No, Brenn, please,” but Brenn slapped away his hand that was trying to pull him back to his seat.
”I'm only a weaponthrake to you, Ulfhrem, as were my father and brother. They served and died as tools, with no more eftlooking from you or your father than what you have for a sword or bow. In my case, though, I think it's still worse, owing to your envy of my sword more than your respect for me. I know that if you had the bire, you'd take this sword for yourself and be done with me. All your headmen can behold it in your eyes.”
