Chapter 4
Heimrikh should have known when Aldriki Kilijaan overtook him on his journey back to Sarmatia that he was in deep trouble, but all he could focus on was his father’s face, back in Byzantium, when he reported back.
‘Conochvars and Piitros Pirkkje?’ the man had snarled, whirling on him suddenly as he stopped his furious pacing across his office, framed by the velvet curtains. ‘You lost them both!’
“You look terrible,” Kilijaan said. “You look like you weren’t worth my time to smuggle out of Raajokin. They’ve all but exiled me for that, you know- tell your father that I will get something out of him for this.”
He realized, after a few moments of waiting for a reply, that Heimrikh wasn’t paying attention at all. In fact, the man didn’t seem like he was physically capable of paying attention. And he stank, like a corpse in the sun.
“There is something seriously wrong with you,” Kilijaan announced, and shook his head, walking away rather faster than he’d come. He’d followed the river from Raajokin down to the Axenios, and had been following the coastline as close as possible through Sarmatia. He was perfectly secure in his confidence that he could take on any Sarmatian that presented themselves, but that didn’t mean he wanted to encounter any. Heimrikh and his stench would do that, either drawing the horses themselves; or the Lizards, and then the Sarmatians after them.
‘Don’t you dare come back until you’ve killed them!’ was what Heimrikh heard, his father’s words and his father’s office imposing themselves over Kilijaan and the coastal plains. He kept stumbling onwards, using his telepathy as a prop, until finally, he fell.
Heimrikh Ásbjarn lay there for half an hour before he could pull himself up again, staggering and listing towards the ground in several aborted attempts to rise, until he mustered his last reserve of power- the energy that was going into keeping him alive- and took off violently, too fast and uncontrolled, back in the direction he’d come from.
When his life finally gave out, he was over Cipros. His body landed in the Morphou District, where it attracted a lot of attention. His already-necrotized leg caused a lot speculation, most of it frantic, bordering on hysteric.
No one thought to look for a spider bite. No one on Cipros had ever heard of the effects of the venom of the Chilean Recluse Spider. No one had ever even heard of the Chilean Recluse Spider.
-
MEMORANDUM: BIN YOAD NIKHON
DATE: 5 July 1826
FROM: Miria HaNarbon, Cipros Field Office, BINYAN
SUBJECT: Assassination in Finland, Suspected Necromancy Sarmatia (FLAGGED URGENT)
TO: Nicholas Ibn Yakov Fury, Alexandria Headquarters, BINYAN
- At an unspecified time in the morning of 25 June, Master Heimrikh Ásbjarn of Byzantium, son of Master Nordmann Ásbjarn of the same city, formerly the patron of Finnish Duke Consort Rixardos of Byzantium and current patron of Doctor Conrad Conochvars, was publically announced guilty of the assassination of Grand Duke Benham of Finland, also Duke of Estia and Livia and Vanspag Ruirig, by his nephew Duke Piitros Pirkkje of Finland. Duke Piitros and Master Heimrikh Ásbjarn subsequently disappeared, the Duke in vengeful pursuit, into the Cemetery Isle, and presumably on into Sarmatia. Ásbjarn’s traveling companion, Doctor Conochvars, subsequently also disappeared, to a locale unknown. The motivations for this assassination remain unclear.
- At 15:09 this afternoon a dead body of a young male, about twenty, with the left leg necrotized, fell from the sky into Morphou. Entry of DNA into serves identified male as Heimrikh Ásbjarn. Further investigation deduced cause of death as infection from said necrotized leg, which the coroner placed as being dead a full week earlier than the rest of the body. Forensic mutation analysis traced Heimrikh Ásbjarn’s path of arrival, under his own telekinetic power, as originating somewhere within Sarmatia.
- Given the mysterious circumstances of the Grand Duke’s assassination, the fact of his Sarmatian ethnicity, the still-missing Finnish Duke, and the seamless join of the week-deceased leg to the recently-deceased corpse, our analysts, working in tandem with the Mediterranean Police analysts stationed on Cipros, have reached a disturbing conjecture: the assassination of the Grand Duke as a either a distraction tactic or a strategic deterrent to cover the activity of a necromancer working out of Sarmatia. In this hypothesis, the necromancer exerted some form of leverage, physical, economical, or diabolical, over Heimrikh Ásbjarn to carry out the assassination. Presumably, when Ásbjarn returned, pursued by Duke Piitros, the necromancer expressed his displeasure through use of his talents. The analysts conclude that, given the elapsed time frame and the circumstances involved, that Duke Piitros has a statistically significant chance of having been murdered in the name of dark magic.
- This case, being out of the Mediterranean Police’s jurisdiction, and beyond the current personnel capabilities and resources of BINYAN, should be outsourced to a third party, preferably one with significant magical resources at their disposal. Ideal candidate: Stephen Peregrinus, Sorcerer Supreme, Governor of Vinland.
(ATTACHED NOTE)
Fury don’t you dare send any of our people into Sarmatia unless it is absolutely necessary for the well-being of humanity/the war effort. Make them take the long way around. We can’t afford to lose anyone to a necromancer. If we have to send anyone- don’t tell them we think there’s a necromancer. We don’t need the devastation in morale and heightened sense of paranoia that would give our operatives.
Also: I’m not going to be the one to tell the Grand Duchess of Finland her nephew’s probably dead. Guess what job you’ve been delegated.
-Miria
-
Swordwork turned out to be the bane of Piitros’ existence; especially when, in every lesson Gwenig gave him after the first, he was jittery and flinched out of the way when she swung at him instead of trying to block it.
“Stop prancing like a newborn foal and stand your ground!” Gwenig snapped at him; and he forced himself to try, he really did, but there was the same dangerdangerdanger! that had come right before Heimrikh had burst in on him, and he just couldn’t. He kept dancing out of the way, twisting and ducking and sidestepping.
Gwenig gave up in disgust about an hour in, and handed him a horsebow. That, Piitros was good at. He would have never thought he’d have an aptitude for aiming, but once he learned the motions and the stance and the grip, he was just as good as any Sarmatian.
Then they stuck him on a horse.
It was fall, by then, and Tribe Stasig had started to migrate away from the river towards the interior for their winter quarters. He would have been on a horse earlier, but-
“I’ve always been good with animals,” he’d said to Gwenig when she remarked how well the mare she’d designated as his training mount took to him.
Gwenig stared at him, mouth slightly agape in a way that had Piitros’ stomach in knots, because he knew that look. That was the look Finnish courtiers reserved for some foreigner’s particularly egregious violations of etiquette- a combination of shock and disgust.
“Horses,” she’d told him, tone so tightly restrained and venomous that he wouldn’t have been surprised if she pulled her sword on him. “Are not animals.”
When the Tribe started to move, he’d been confined to riding in the wagons, like the sick and Dr. Conochvar, the slave.
He very, very hesitantly consulted the priestess Maraaja before he proceeded. On the first auspicious day for it- Sikkintai of Jaatjakuu, the Freezing Moon, the time when the ground started to harden and the frost cling to the rocks and grass well into the morning- he approached Gwenig’s fire as she was gathering her food for breakfast and threw himself to the ground, kowtowing at her feet.
“My esteemed war-leader, Gwenig Vanspag Stasig,” he said, mentally despairing of the strange constructions he had to make in Sarmatian to make it fit Finnish penitence formulas. “I, Piitros Loistavis Pirkkje, a child of Tribe Ruirig, do beg thee for your mercy and forgiveness for my offense against the children of Tribe Stasig, your glorious horses, and the indignity I conveyed to their parents, the courageous warriors of Tribe Stasig. I, a mere foreigner, spoke in contemptible ignorance of your traditions and lives. May I bear this shame until thy ancestors have satisfaction of my sin.”
“What in Thamigasadag’s name are you doing?” Gwenig demanded.
“I called your horses animals,” Piitros said into the dirt. “I’m apologizing.”
“You-” he could hear her exasperation. “Get up, city-boy.”
Gwenig spent the rest of the day getting him used to sitting on a horse without reins.
By Opettakuu, the Teaching Moon, he could hunt from the saddle with the horse bow. He kept his uncle’s swords attached to the saddle, and dutifully took them out for the training sessions Gwenig kept making him do. She’d given up on trying to keep him from ducking and dancing all over the place, and was instead working on getting him to avoid and attack at the same time. It was slow but steady going.
Late on the day they broke winter camp, Piitros got the danger-feeling and twisted around in the saddle, hand shooting out. The arrow point stilled a foot away from him.
Further down the group, Maraaja laughed, loud and long, and lowered her bow.
“It’s no city-softness that grips your stallion, Vanspag!” she called to Gwenig, cantering towards them. “It is his gifts, given of the gods!”
Gwenig, who’d rode back to Piitro’s place when she’d seen what happened, eyed him speculatively.
“Argimpasa has blessed him?” she asked.
“Not Argimpasa,” Maraaja said. “He has his own gods in his bloodline, just as Stasig has Thamigasadag.”
She goaded her horse into circling Piitros.
“Tell me, Finnish Duke, what divinity you claim. What god weaves power in green-gold, that I see about you when I scry?”
“Loki Laivisi,” Piitros told her. “Called Silvertongue, Great Prince, Grandfather. But- what Heimrikh-”
“A gift from the gods cannot be taken by humans,” Maraaja told him. “Altered, perhaps. But never taken.”
The priestess wheeled her horse around and started to canter away again, towards her old place in the train.
“Examine yourself, Vanapaghavuk!” she yelled over her shoulder.
“‘Vanapaghavuk’?” Piitros had to ask Gwenig.
Gwenig thought on it a moment.
“Spider-warrior,” she translated for him. “Spider-man.”
She paused, looking faintly confused.
“Maraaja has declared you an adult?” she muttered quietly, face furrowed in consternation.
That night, when they stopped, Piitros calculated the direction of Taivaskaavelija and went to sit facing it on the highest available ground. He made a small fire and burned strips of leather he’d laboriously written prayers on in vegetable dye, to Loki and Sikkin and his ancestors as thanks and courtesy; and then to Seppo Ilmarinen and Frija for guidance about these powers the Sarmatian priestess had hinted at.
As winter turned clearly into spring, Tribe Stasig started to move back towards the Finnish border and the river. Gwenig’s sword training continued, faster and easier now that they knew his dancing was an unconscious reaction to his danger-sense, using the faster reflexes that came with it.
When the first mare was due to foal, she kept him up all night to watch and assist. Come dawn, there was a newborn filly jumping about the landscape.
“She is yours,” Gwenig said, handing him the wooden bowl of the blood from the afterbirth. “You shall train her, and she will be your first daughter.”
Piitros took the bowl and knelt next to filly when she finally returned to her mother and collapsed to her knees in the grass, exhausted. He dipped his fingers in the bowl and drew the appropriate symbols on her coat, hesitating a moment after he’d finished. Then, using the last of the blood, added new symbols- the thick wave of Jormungandr down her spine, the chevrons of Sleipnir’s hoofprints along her sides, and Fenrir’s sun wheel sigil on her chest.
Gwenig eyed the new symbols curiously, but stayed silent on them.
“What is your daughter’s name?”
“Reino,” Piitros told her, and then had to explain the story of Reino, brother of Princess Hiruut, the first Finn to reach Japan. He had ridden Sleipnir himself to the shores of the Pacific to bring back Imperial Prince Sukehito, the kitsune, as a husband for his sister.
“Reino was no mare, city-boy,” Gwenig told him, smile sharp but teasing. “And that’s a filly you have for your daughter.”
“Our names aren’t segregated,” Piitros replied. “We don’t do this… male-female thing, in Finland. It’s ridiculous. There’s no point. It doesn’t make sense.”
Gwenig’s eyebrows disappeared into her hair.
“Why say ‘these two sets of body parts and only these, they make people this’ when it’s the work of a moment to change them?” Piitros asked. “Infinite combinations in infinite degrees. Mostly Finns are shapeshifters, Gwenig. We know better than anyone how different bodies can be, and how they don’t define the person inside them. It’s more important to know how much you can change, rather than what you’ve changed.”
“Can you change that?” Gwenig asked.
Piitros sighed, and closed his eyes briefly.
Foreigners, he told himself resignedly.
“I used to be able to,” he told her. “Before.”
Tribe Stasig passed the summer near the Raa- but not too close, and not near Raajokin, on Piitros’ insistence. He didn’t want anyone getting wind of his whereabouts until he was absolutely certain he could protect his aunt from the Ásbjarns. Reino grew and Piitros learned how to train a horse, and how to fight with a knife, and perfected his archery and his new shapeshifting skills. By the time they broke summer camp in 1827, just a couple months over a year since Piitros had arrived, Gwenig declared him ‘marginally competent’ at swordsmanship. Piitros knew his best asset in any swordfight he might find himself in was the few seconds’ warning his danger-sense gave him, the avoidance reflexes he’d honed, and the stamina he’d built. He could evade getting hit long enough to escape, or wear out his opponent, or for the Stasig warriors to come to his rescue.
That fall, on their way to their winter grounds, Tribe Stasig strayed much closer to the Sarmatian mountains than they had last year. In Vikkinrkuu, the moon named for the time of year when the old Vikings would return from their raiding season and prey on Finnish fishing boats, he and Gwenig broke off for a few days and rode into the mountains. There, Piitros exercised the only part of his new powers he hadn’t been able to properly explore on the rolling plains of the rest of Sarmatia, and he spent three days swinging through the ravines on the cables of webbing he could now shoot, joyfully giving into the undulating up-and-down of the pendulum-swing and the pull of momentum and centrifugal force, so different from the feeling of flight he’d had in any birds’ form.
On the fourth day, Gwenig climbed onto his back and he strapped her down with some quick shoots of webbing, and she screamed exhilarated war-cries into his ear as she experienced this new form of travel, more wild and untamed than even the power of riding on the back of a galloping feral horse as you tried to break it to saddle.
-
Something was different, when Gwen brought him back to the main camp. Piitros couldn't quite put a finger on it, but...
Something had changed.
It was like seeing the world through new eyes.
He woke up groggy, sparred with Gwen, avoided Maraaja, (who had taken to turning up wherever he was,) ate, talked to Doctor Conochvars, practiced shooting, spent time with Reino, sparred with Gwen, spent more time with Reino, ate, got beaten up by Gwen in hand-to-hand, and went to bed. Mysteriously, he never woke up with bruises - just groggy.
During her attempts to teach him how to fight, Gwen also did her level best to teach him how to be a proper Sarmatian. It...sort-of worked.
He got along with the horses, in any case.
When one of Reino's friends, Iialaag, dropped a foal, the changes he had experienced suddenly smacked Piitros in the face.
Iialaag's sister-warrior, a hard-faced cousin of Gwen's, kissed him firmly on the mouth after he carefully helped the newborn foal - a filly - to her feet.
“Thank you for your help,” the older woman said. “Iialaag and I are in your debt. What is her name?”
Piitros looked at the filly - his second-sister, he realized, and knew.
“Benhaag.”
Suddenly, a lamplight swung over their shadowed furrow. “City-boy! You here with Iialaag and Drasaka?”
Piitros was abruptly aware of how sweaty and grimy he was. There were substances that he couldn't identify all over his arms and chest, and blood was beginning to dry and crack on his face.
“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “I’m here.”
“Get up here, the Kiiniik and several other tribes have sent messengers for council.”
Piitros stumbled in Gwen's direction. “Shouldn't I clean up first? I mean –”
Gwen huffed. “It's just birth fluid, we've all been covered in it at some point. Hurry, all of the warriors are gathered already.”
Piitros tripped over his feet as he followed Gwen, and gratefully sank to the ground when they arrived at the tribe's bonfire.
“Vanspagii,” Gwen said brusquely, “What brings the Kiiniik and the Darusiig this far north?”
One of the foreign warriors, a dark woman with vicious scars dragging her right eye closed, spoke up harshly. “City-folk. Our camp was attacked last night.”
“They fought them off,” another warrior said. “But they lost three Little Mothers.”
“We sent messengers to the nearest camps as soon as we could,” the scarred warrior continued. “The Darusiig responded first, and then the Mekogg suggested that we call a council.”
“City-folk?” Gwen said incredulously. “City-folk killed three Little Mothers?”
“They attacked us while we were all out hunting!” the scarred Kiiniik women snapped. “Since when have city-folk known so much about the ways of the tribes?”
Piitros coughed hesitantly. “Ah - when you say city-folk, you mean outsiders, right? It's just that - I know that there's a Finnish saying. Ah - Don't kick dirt in the faces of Sarmatians, you will die without honor. And, well, the Judeans have something similar. Almost anyone you talk to who isn't from Sarmatia wouldn't even dream of attacking one of the tribes.”
“Of course,” Gwen hissed. “The Venidikii!”
Piitros blinked. The word basically meant ‘cow dung people.’
Gwen threw him a look that fell somewhere between exasperated and...something soft. “Come with me, Piitriik.”
Piitros startled at the nickname, and scrambled to his feet. “Yeah?”
Gwen turned towards the gathering of warriors. “Vanspagii, strategize. I will return. Maraaja stands in until I return.” She stalked away.
Piitros sprinted to keep up. “Gwen?”
“You may not know,” Gwen snapped. “There used to be city-folk, in the north. They called themselves Veneda, which they said meant ‘people who sell.’ We called them Venidikii, which means ‘people who spread cow dung.’ We let them be, so long as they let us be. When they started attacking us, we wiped them out. The remaining cowards fled to the city-lands in the south.”
Piitros frowned. That sounded familiar. “How long ago was this?”
“Eighty years ago.”
Piitros shook his head. “If they had someone - a leader, a king - then he or his heir may feel wronged. If they follow the pattern of deposed kings outside of Sarmatia, they'd bide their time until they got enough fighters together to attack.”
Gwen hissed through her teeth. “Api drink their blood! So you're saying that only the Venidikii would be able to swallow back their cowardly bile and invade.”
Piitros sighed. “Probably. I mean, after all of these centuries of nobody even touching the borders except for desperate bandits, what is most likely?”
“Awaken, Agin, O Sword of Red Seas,” Gwen breathed. “Send me a spider to catch the cowardly fly. Piitriik, this makes sense.” She grinned fiercely, her teeth the same crimson shade as her lips. “Come, you know more of outlanders than anyone, you can help strategize.”
Before Piitros could say anything, Gwen pressed a quick kiss to his lips. “Come!”
Anything Piitros had planned to say vanished. It took all of the physical training of the past year to keep his knees steady and his feet on the ground as he followed Gwen back to the fire.
Most of the actual strategic planning that followed was beyond him, but Piitros could occasionally chime in with information about ‘outlanders and city-folk.’
The sun was beginning to rise when Gwen gave a short, sharp whistle to gain the attention of the conversing warriors and Vanspagii.
“We have a problem.”
The Vanspag of Mekogg, a stocky man with arm muscles the size of melons, scowled. “What? There are no warriors in the world superior to ours, and especially not now that we have planned our response to their attacks!”
Gwen snorted, the sound much like one Piitros had heard Tagspapiig make. “That is true. But while they are one force, we are many. Scattered. Piitros reminded me that city-folk always end up with one leader to coordinate attack - we do the same as tribes. While we Stasig travel from the Eastern River to the Western Mountains, what of the Niinok and the Ginaanag? They travel to the far north and east, and the far south and east. They will not have gotten word, yet. What of you, Kiiniik, or you, Darusiig? Our way of life is superior, but we have no way to ensure our connections so much as we do our individuality.”
“What are you suggesting?” The Vanspag of Darusiig demanded. “We choose one leader for all of us?”
“A tournament,” Piitros blurted.
All of the warriors, including the Vanspagii of Darusiig, Kiiniik, and Mekogg, turned to stare at him. Piitros felt his cheeks burn.
“Obviously, not to the death, because we will need our greatest warriors, but a tournament between Vanspagii for the greatest. Who will, ah, lead.”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, and then –
“I doubted you, Gwenig, for the keeping of a city child,” the Vanspag of Kiiniik rasped. “I was wrong. Good thinking, city-man.”
“Yes.” Gwen gave Piitros a wide smile. “Good thinking, Piitriik.”
Piitros was relatively sure that he would need some packed snow to relieve his painful blush.
-
The next day, Piitros struggled to get through his ordinary schedule - the sky had been rosy when he had finally gone to sleep, and it had probably only been about three hours till his morning habits had woken him.
“Vanapaghavuk!”
Piitros turned, rubbing his eyes. He looked up - and then promptly returned his gaze to the ground. Maraaja was directly in front of him, dressed in her normal non-riding clothing - that is to say, a tiny breastband and a belt. And some beads. And a Sarmatian longbow.
It was not good for Piitros’ psyche.
“High Priestess?”
“Join me in my wagon.”
“Ah - what?” Piitros squeaked.
“Join me in my wagon,” Maraaja repeated.
Piitros struggled to find some words; they didn't come.
“It’s this way.” Maraaja reached out to grab his shirt, when the blast of a horn rang out.
“Summons horn,” Maraaja breathed. “Our Vanspag calls.”
Piitros ran in the direction of the horn, mentally insisting that he was running towards Gwen, and not away from Maraaja.
As soon as he reached shouting distance, Gwen waved an impatient hand at him. “You’re late, Piitriik!”
“I came running as soon as I heard,” Piitros protested. “I’m not quite as swift as my sisters or yours, not yet.”
“Not ever,” Gwen laughed, but her eyes were dark. “A city-man has been sighted ahead of the outlanders’ so-called army. Scouts say he calls himself a ‘herald.’ I – Piitros, what is it that ails you?”
Piitros paled. “Ah – can’t it wait? It can wait, really, it can wait.”
Gwen's lips twitched. “What did Maraaja do this time?”
“Can we not talk about this now?”
Gwen rolled her eyes. “Fine.” Lifting the horn, she let out another three short blasts.
“You’re rallying the warriors,” Piitros observed nervously. “I mean, you’re rallying everyone. For a city-man?”
“I, THE GRAND HERALD OF THE HIGH AND POWERFUL JUSTUS VENEDA, DEMAND THE ATTENTION OF –”
Whizz-ping!
Piitros blinked as the so-called ‘herald’ toppled off of his horse and out of sight.
“Take the child!” Gwen ordered two warriors as they rode into view. “I have claimed the city-man. He is the herald of the oathbreakers.”
The warriors carefully led away the startled horse. Piitros carefully remained within Gwen’s shadow. She had drawn her sword, and Piitros had learned from experience that the safest place in Sarmatia was behind a bloodthirsty Gwenig.
“You claim heraldship of the oathbreaker,” Gwen said coolly, lifting the whimpering man's chin with the flat of her blade. “What cowardly excuse has he for this disgraceful insurrection?”
The herald made a squeaking noise. “Justus Veneda is the rightful ruler of – ghuuuuurkkkkkhh!”
Piitros swallowed. Hard. Well-trained or not, he was relatively certain that any man would be shaken by the casual way that Gwen had castrated the herald. With her sword. With no care for the blood spray.
When the man's screams began to reach uncomfortable notes, Piitros sighed, and drew his bow.
Gwen pouted – which looked a bit strange with blood streaking her scarred cheeks. “Why did you do that?”
Piitros frowned. Why had he done that? Not long ago, he would likely have vomited in the face of Gwen's cool brutality. Now, he was...impressed.
Why had he done that?
He let the words fall out without thinking about it.
“His screaming was getting irritating.”
Had he really said that? He had really said that. Oh, gods.
His spiral of horrified thought was interrupted by –
Warmth. Sweet. Hair tickling his face. Gwen? Gwen?
Just when Piitros was beginning to lose all capacity to think, Gwen pulled away, her stormy eyes pinning his.
“Join my wagon?” Gwen breathed. “Tonight? Join me?”
Piitros attempted to breathe. In. Out. Once upon a time, he could do it without thinking, but Gwen was making that difficult.
“Y-yes?” Piitros choked out. He – had said that out loud. Right?
Gwen pressed another intense kiss onto his lips, and snatched his bow. “Ha!”
Whirling, she shot six more arrows into the herald in quick succession.
Each one, Piitros noticed dazedly, was carefully placed to avoid instant death.
“It seems, cowardly emissary, that I owe you for my pleasant situation.” Gwen smiled widely. “Do not worry. Our priestess will send you home.”
The herald wheezed at her, a bit of blood bubbling out of the corner of his mouth.
“Maraaja!”
Maraaja just...appeared.
Piitros was not going to think too hard about the implications of that...ability.
“You called?”
Gwen pointed. “Send the messenger back to his cowardly masters.”
Maraaja pulled a knife from...somewhere, and slashed her palms.
“OH GODS I CALL UPON THEE!” The voice that tore itself from Maraaja’s throat was raw and choral. Blood trailed down her arms as she lifted her hands to the sky. “ARGIMPASA, PLEASE – RETURN TO SENDER!”
Thunder crashed, and lightning tore itself from a cloudless sky. When the spots had cleared from their eyes, all of Piitros’ arrows were in a neat little pile where the dying herald had been.
The arrows were clean, neither scorched nor bloody.
Only the outline of a prone body in drying blood revealed what had occurred on the browning grass only moments before.
Gwen smiled coolly. “Well, that’s done. Einik, get the message out that tournament starts in an hour. We don’t have any time to waste.”
Piitros gathered up his arrows as Gwen’s warriors headed in different directions as per her orders.
“It is coming.”
Piitros turned slowly. Maraaja was gripping Gwen’s arm tightly, her eyes wide and shining with an eerie silvery light.
“What’s coming?” Gwen demanded.
Maraaja smiled, but it was creepily empty of emotion. “The future. The crown. You.”
A curl of fear trickled its way up Piitros’ back, but Gwen’s face just hardened. “I’m going to win, then?”
Maraaja blinked, and her eyes were back to their normal muddy grey. “Of course,” she said, her voice calm and assured. “You are Gwenig Vanspag Stasig, born with a blade in hand. You will lead our people into the future.”
She walked away.
Gwen stared after the small Priestess for a long moment. “I am never certain if she is fooling with me, or if she is having a vision,” Gwen admitted. “Maraaja may be a friend, but… I do not blame you for your discomfort.”
Piitros sighed. “Right. Well. Um. Be careful?”
Gwen turned to stare him in the eyes. “Careful?” She laughed. “I will defeat every warrior who faces me, Piitrik – and you will join me in my wagon after sunset.”
Piitros took a shaky breath, and nodded.