Chapter Eleven
“Let me carry you.”
Royla rolled her eyes, shook her head, then laughed. She’d lost count of how many times he’d asked. “I’m with child, Thanred. Not an invalid. I can walk. I am fine,” she assured him.
He frowned, his worry showing, but didn’t press any further.
They had been walking away from the mountain for three days now. Her feet were sore. Even though he’d fashioned a dress for her out of long grass, it itched against her skin.
The nights were warm, lying next to him. But each morning as they set out it would take hours before she could warm up. And not a single word from Thanred about where they were headed.
She decided to try again. “Master?” she asked from a few steps behind him.
Thanred smiled at her. “It pleases me to hear you call me that,” he said. “But you are claimed. We are mated. You can call me by my name. Or blazeer. Husband, in Dranark.”
She smiled, the idea that he was asking to be called husband warming her insides. “Yes, husband,” she said. Saying it made her insides tickle. “Will you tell me now? Where we are going?”
Thanred took a few more steps, then came to a halt next to a fallen tree. He pointed to it. “Sit,” he said. “You should rest.”
She sat down as he’d asked, grateful at being able to rest. Each day it had become harder to get moving and march until the sunset. She looked at him, hoping he would reveal what the secret about their destination.
“We are going home. To my home. To the caves,” he explained.
Royla furrowed her brow. It was not the response she’d been expecting. “I thought that...”
Thanred waved her question away. “I am unwanted, yes,” he said. His expression hardened. “But I will not have my bride living in the wild. Nor will I stand raising our child in this loneliness.”
She shook her head. From what he’d said before it seemed like, for him, there was no going back to his home. “But what about what you told me? Dodlin and the others?”
He clenched his jaw at hearing the name. “Dodlin is a coward. He deserves to be killed.”
Her eyes shot open at what he’d said. “Killed?” she whispered.
Thanred turned to stare at some point far off in the distance. “We were a proud people once, we Dranark. We did not turn on each other or squabble for power. There was order to our tribe. Rules.” He seemed lost in the memory.
“What happened?” Royla asked.
Thanred paused before replying. “The weak became hungry. Our leaders, my father was one, did not do enough to shield them from the world. The order used to be that those who had plenty would give to those who had less. Fear gripped us all when the humans began their attacks. When the First War began there was even less to go around. Everyone was too busy fighting. It was Dodlin’s father who first harnessed that fear for his own ends. ”
Royla sat staring at him and listening to his explanation.
“They divided us. They preyed on the weak, telling them lies. Saying that if they swore fealty to them, they would return the Dranark to prosperity. There were some who believed them. The banishments began. Anyone who dared to stand up to Dodlin or his father was outcast, forced to wander the wilds until...”
“Until?” Royla said, breathless.
Thanred’s expression darkened. “Dranark males do not last long without release,” he growled. “Most took their own lives, falling from Mother Mountain rather than being driven to insanity by their need.”
She gasped in shock at his description, covering her mouth with a hand. It took some time for the reality of what he’d said to settle into her mind. “Then why... how can we go back there?” she asked.
Thanred let out a heavy breath. He shook his head. “There is no choice for us but to try. There will be others who feel the same way but are too scared to speak up. We must... find them, somehow. Just how...I do not yet know.”
“But Dodlin,” she said, her mind already drawing a line to the danger this plan held. “Surely he won’t allow you to return?”
“He will not,” Thanred said simply.
“Then what is the sense of going back?” Royla asked, her heart already beating faster at what she feared Thanred might say.
“There is honor in facing him,” Thanred said quietly. “He must be challenged.”
“Challenged?” she asked.
Thanred knelt in front of her. He took her hands in his.
His palms were warm and a little damp. “There is honor in this,” he said softly.
“Even if I fail, I have no doubt they would take you in. The Dranark might be broken but they are not yet animals. They won’t send a female out into the wilds.
Not when she is with child. Even if that child is mine. ”
Royla had barely heard anything he’d said past the word fail. She stared deeply into his eyes, hoping the truth wasn’t what she feared. “Fail?” she whispered.
Thanred’s shoulders slumped forward. “If I challenge Dodlin, others might come to his aid. There is a chance that...” He trailed off, then swallowed, as if his throat had tightened.
There could be no doubt any longer about what he meant. Royla began shaking her head, unable even to imagine a life without him. “No,” she said quietly.
“Royla, you must listen to me, I’ve...”
“No!” she screamed, squeezing her eyes shut tight to try to keep the thought of Thanred being no longer out of her imagination.
He squeezed her hands tighter and waited until the last echo of her shriek had faded. “Royla.” He spoke her name softly.
She opened her eyes to look at him, a tear rolling down her cheek.
“Royla,” he repeated. “I... love you more deeply than I’ve ever loved anything.
I would do anything for you. Anything for our child.
But a child is nothing without a village to raise it.
You must understand that. Whatever happens, I know you will be cared for.
Because they will know that what grows in your belly is Dranark in some way.
Whether I’m there or not is... secondary. ”
Her whole body ached as more tears rolled down her face.
The pain, the unbearable heaviness of what he was saying seemed like it would be too much to bear.
She shook her head, trying to make it all go away.
“No, Thanred,” she said, her voice tight.
“I can’t. We can just stay here. We can find a way.
Maybe later things will change? Maybe Dodlin.
.. maybe something will happen to him. Maybe. ..”
He stilled her with a hand on her shoulder. “I’ve made my decision. I’m sorry this pains you. That was not my intention. I am Dranark. We don’t let life happen at us. When things are hard, we must act.”
His solemn tone sent a shiver racing down her back.
As much as she wanted him to change his mind, to tell her they could walk back into the forest and live in peace and loneliness, there was an honor to what he’d said that moved her deeply.
She looked deep into his dark eyes. “I will always be proud to know you are father to my child,” she whispered.
Thanred’s jaw clenched and he swallowed, as if fighting against his own emotions. After a deep breath, he rose and offered a hand to help her stand up.
Royla took it and stood up from the log she’d been sitting on.
Though the dread of knowing what they had to face still gripped her, the fog had begun to clear from her mind.
Thanred was right. This was the honorable thing to do.
Not to hide and hope they were never found but to fight.
To try to carve out a life for themselves and their child.
“Come. We are almost at the caves,” he said softly, placing a hand on her back.
Royla nodded and began to walk next to him toward the setting sun and whatever destiny the future held.
She no longer felt the soreness in her feet. Nor did she care that she was cold. She fixed her mind on one thought: that she was here now with Thanred. She closed her eyes and tried to capture the intensity of that feeling so that she would never forget it.
The sun had just touched the earth on the horizon when they heard the voices.
At first Royla panicked. She gripped Thanred’s arm and cowered behind him, her teeth chattering from fear as much as from the cold.
When he raised a hand to quiet her, she held her breath and listened intently to the sounds drifting through the woods.
They were strange, guttural grunts. For a moment they sounded like animals. But as she listened more closely it was clear that there was an order to them. A language she didn’t understand.
“Mother Mountain,” Thanred whispered.
“What is it?” Royla hissed behind him, clutching his arm.
“Stay here,” he ordered. “Stay low. Behind that bush. I will be back.”
“Don’t leave me!” she pleaded, gripping his arm even harder, not wanting to be left alone.
Thanred turned to look at her with a stern gaze. “Royla, I promise you I will return. Those voices... they sound like Dranark.”
Her eyes went wide. “Who are they? Are they your... do you know them?” she whispered.
“I think so. But I want to make sure it is safe. I promise you I won’t go forward if it’s not. You have to let go.”
Shivering, she pried her fingers off his arm. Crouching low, she ducked behind the bush he’d pointed out. She curled into a ball, holding her knees to her chest as she watched him disappear into the woods beyond.
As the light waned, darkness surrounded her.
She tried to count, to have some idea of how much time had passed, but soon lost track.
She sat barely breathing, trying to listen for any sounds that might betray what was happening to Thanred.
The only thing she could hear were the sounds of the forest, the voices having disappeared into the noise.
A twig cracking made her gasp and look up through the bush. Thanred was standing beyond. He crouched low and reached out to beckon her toward him. “Come, Royla. It is safe. They are friends.”