Chapter 41
Chapter forty-one
The Forest
Skyre hadn’t slept.
His fingers smelled of ale. His stomach twisted. It wasn’t usual for him to be ill after drink, regardless of its measure. A gift, he’d been told.
That morning, it felt like a curse.
He sat on a wooden stool beside his tent, lacing up his boots. The camp was busy as the Féin rose. The king kept his head down. His chest bare against the chill. It snapped at him. He let it.
“Mirín?”
He didn’t glance up.
“You look pale.” Medhin knelt beside him, reaching up to feel his forehead.
“I’m fine,” he muttered.
“No fever,” she said. “What is the matter? Did you sleep poorly?”
“I said I’m fine.” He pushed her hand away. He saw the concern hedged in her frown. It only annoyed him more. “Where is breakfast?” he barked, getting to his feet. He strapped his kit upon his waist, the leather digging hard into his skin.
“My heart,” she whispered, “let me make you something to dull the pain.”
“I’m not in pain!”
The men were gathering, some returning from the river down the bank. Rask sat at the table, sharpening his knife, watching with keen grey eyes. Skyre could not bear to meet them. Instead, he was found by Greyv, who put a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“Rough night, eh? Ground is hard as she comes. Might as well be sleeping on stone! Come on, why don’t you sit?”
He didn’t want to sit. He didn’t want to be spoken to kindly. Their quiet words grated on him. He wished someone would yell.
“Breakfast,” he demanded. “I’ll send you all out to the axe if you don’t move your asses!”
“Gods, you aren’t a morning person,” Greyv quipped.
Skyre laughed sharply, if only because of how absurd it was. He let his friend steer him to the table and into the chair at the head. Rask pushed a tankard in front of him.
“Drink.”
“I’m not thirsty.”
The old man’s eyes narrowed. “Drink.”
Skyre shivered.
“You best mellow out before you ’come a real problem.”
His teeth ground, but he gripped the tankard, swallowing its contents down. Jor was watching him from across the way, and it fanned the flame inside him. A thousand gazes followed him wherever he went. But today, they felt heavier.
His skin prickled.
It wasn’t the feeling of impending danger.
Rather, the off-putting sensation of being unable to explain a thing that ought not to have been; like a ghost passing at the shoulder.
And for a moment, he wished it was. He wished he could turn and find emptiness, but instead found a thing more cruel and more haunting than any ghoul or apparition: The druid stood at his tent, his thin frame clad in white.
His pale face keeping all its secrets. He spoke nothing. His eyes were silent.
Skyre dragged his gaze away, digging it into the tabletop. The voices around him became murmur, then babble, then incessant, irritable buzzing. The cooks brought breakfast. There were eggs and bacon and mushrooms.
The smell made him sick.
“You look like you’ve had a lashing, Korv,” said Greyv, playfully. The king went still at the name.
“Aye,” muttered the man, coming up to the table. “A bit heavy on the drink, I was.”
“Mm. You ought to go down to the river and sober up.”
“Aye,” Korv said again.
He went off and Greyv chuckled. “I think he’s not likely to remember the last week.”
Skyre’s eyes flicked to the druid, who moved about the camp like a memory.
Something that had been, that no longer was, and now took the shape of sorrow.
He brought his plate to the end of the table, where he sat and ate.
Wordless. Jor feigned concern, whispering words to him the Vaich could not hear.
Skyre stabbed at a mushroom. “He’s a lucky whoreson, Korv. Most wouldn’t survive a night like that.”
The druid did not look up.
Greyv said, “Another hour at the keg and he wouldn’t have. Good thing you were there to stop him.”
Skyre scraped his fork against the plate. “Maybe I ought to let him have his fun.”
A clatter rang through the air.
Heads jerked up, swiveling towards the end of the table where the druid sat. His hand was empty. His spoon had ricocheted off the plate and fallen somewhere amongst the grass. Yet… he didn’t move. No one did.
Silently, the druid lifted his head. They looked at each other for an eternity, for an instant, and a thousand words passed between. Then the druid rose and started towards the wood.
Instantly, Skyre was on his feet, the calls of his cohort following after.
“Sire?”
“M’laird!”
“Skyre!”
The sound of his boots padding through the grass melded with his panting.
The druid was small, but the swiftness of his steps was deliberate.
Skyre followed, fighting through branches.
They grew tangled, tethering his wrists.
He shook them off, propelling himself forwards, delving deeper into the forest. Even as his pace quickened, the druid seemed to get further away, until Skyre was running, arm outstretched, grasping at the wool of his cloak.
“Druid.”
His fingers met air.
“Druid!”
He pushed on, his heart pounding ceaselessly in his ears. He lunged, grasping the druid and pinning him hard against a tree.
Everything went quiet.
The sound of his heart… the pulse of the wood… it all faded under the whisper of wind. His fingers dug into the druid’s soft flesh, as if to assure himself of his realness. No more illusions. Just him and that fragile thing.
“Why?” Skyre muttered. “Why do you look at me like that?”
Those pale eyes waited, endless and idle.
Skyre ground his teeth. “You led him on, didn’t you?”
The druid said nothing and it was louder than any scream. Skyre trembled and, for a moment, he was back in that dark chamber, with the druid beneath him on the altar.
He blinked as the memories rushed into him, but instead of Korv’s shrouded face, he saw himself, his body pressing the druid to the ground.
He gasped, staggering backwards, tearing his fingers from the druid’s skin. He felt as if he’d been doused in flame. A flame he could not control. A flame he could not traverse.
His shoulders heaved in rhythm with his gulping breaths, fingers clawing in his hair. “Why didn’t you cry out? Why didn’t you—”
“If I had wept, would it still haunt you?”
His eyes widened, cutting back to the druid who stood unmoved, as if he hadn't spoken. As if his words existed only within the king’s mind.
“I-I would have come—”
The druid shook his head. “No. No one would have come.”
“It isn’t true!”
Silence.
Anger knotted inside him. “I would have.”
The druid peeled himself away from the bark. “I wanted some air, but it is stale here. If you don’t mind, I’ll head back.”
Before he could stop himself, Skyre reached out again, gripping the druid’s wrist in a loose hold. “Please,” he whispered. “Don’t… I need…”
He had been taught to counter any enemy. He knew the blade, the fist and the fire. But this disquiet…
“… say something,” Skyre rasped, voice cracking with desperation. "Curse me, strike me! I need you to—”
“Hate you?”
“Don’t you?” he begged. “Won’t you?”
“I wish to head back.”
A strangled sound slipped between Skyre’s lips. He’d groped out for an anchor in the chaos, but instead he heard the iron slipping through the water, dragging further, further into the deep. His vision blurred and then drifted, unmoored, over the druid’s shoulder.
And that’s when he saw it. A strange shadow in the morning pale. His eyes narrowed in attempt to parse it out, only to realize too late.
He leapt forwards, taking the druid in his arms and twisting them both aside. There was a sharp whistle as the arrow grazed past, but Skyre pressed them tightly against the tree. The druid tensed in his hold, his gasp drowned out by shouting.
Through gritted teeth, Skyre hissed a command, “Get down and don’t move!”
“I—”
The sound of running footsteps. Skyre broke away, drawing his blade. With his free hand, he pulled the druid close and shoved him roughly to the ground beneath a fallen log. “Now!”
The druid didn’t argue, instead, tucked himself beneath. Skyre turned sharply, his heels digging into the brush and with a hard thrust, buried his blade between the ribs of a charging attacker. Bandits. Their feathered armor was almost certainly Escgalian. Likely looted from the northern ridge.
A second man came from the left, blade raised and eyes wild.
Skyre pivoted, meeting the blow in a fierce metallic clash.
He kicked out, knocking the attacker off balance, then drove his sword into his gut, twisting sharply before tearing it free.
Hot blood sprayed his cheek and spilled over the grass at his feet.
Skyre drank in the scent. Adrenaline claimed him, sharpened his senses until each breath, each heartbeat, became thunderous.
Another arrow hissed passed his ear. He glanced aside, eyes narrowing upon the archer now retreating into the dense foliage.
“Coward,” Skyre spat, teeth bared. Another charged, howling in his unclean language. Skyre parried, feeling the satisfying impact ripple up his arm.
He pushed the man backwards and slashed a deep gash across his throat. The attacker dropped with a wet, gurgling gasp, his body thudding against the brush.
His attention snapped back to the fleeing bowman, who struggled frantically to nock another arrow. In a dash, he closed the distance, feinting to the left as the arrow loosed, missing by a hand.
Before the bowman could draw again, Skyre swept his sword upwards.
The bow shattered beneath his strike, sending splinters raining down.
The bandit stumbled, wide-eyed with panic but Skyre pinned him to a tree with a thrust through the chest. He watched the frantic life fade from his eyes, then yanked his sword free with a sickening crunch.
A cry drew his attention—unfamiliar, ethereal, and yet he was sure he’d heard…
His name.
He wheeled around. A bandit had spotted the druid’s hiding place and barreled towards him, raising his sword for the kill.
Skyre surged forwards, legs driving him with furious determination. He’d bridged the distance in a moment, muscles straining. As the attacker brought his weapon down, he plunged his blade through his back. Iron erupted between his ribs, blood splattering the druid’s white robes.
The attacker stiffened, then slackened and Skyre wrenched his blade free, shoving the body aside with a growl of disdain.
Quiet crept back into the wood.
The Vaich stood, blade dripping scarlet onto the underbrush.
The druid’s awestruck expression unsettled him. He’d never seen anything so uncertain in his gaze. But he didn’t care to revel. His tongue was bitter with the taste of metal, and he let out one ragged exhale.
“I told you I would come.”
He reached out his bloodstained hand. There was a moment—a hesitation. Then, the druid gently placed his own within.
Skyre brought him to his feet, eyes searching for anything amiss. He found no injury, but the druid’s free hand clutched around the hilt of a familiar blade.
His golden dagger.
A hundred unspoken things passed between them, but one loosed its way between his lips. “The next man to touch you in violence…” Skyre muttered, “you slit his fucking throat.”
The druid’s mouth parted and closed, but said nothing as the Vaich turned away.
“Even if it’s me.”