Chapter Six Guthnyr
CHAPTER SIX
Guthnyr
The Vulksa raid claimed six lives from Tahrim Kyrn, all but two of them Morvek.
By morning Velkar’s grief had abated into desolate misery unalleviated by her wolves’ attempts at comfort.
The trio of silver-furred beasts clustered around the elder, licking her face and whining in sympathy while she stared at the ashes of the firepit.
Guthnyr had sagged in relief at finding Sygurn, Aleida and Ryma unharmed.
The girl rested in her adoptive mother’s arms, regarding the blood-streaked, corpse-strewn snow with keen fascination and scant sign of tears.
Recalling that they had found her amid the ruins of a massacred Travka camp, Guthnyr wondered if the child had become accustomed to sights like this.
The thought added impetus to his efforts to clear the bodies away and repair the damaged dwellings.
Their attackers had made free use of fire and several huts now lacked roofs and shutters.
“A waste of effort,” Deyna observed as Guthnyr dragged a Vulksa corpse into the woods. Their own fallen would be afforded due ceremony, but these he would leave for the crows, and the leopards. “We should have been gone from here with the dawn.”
“I haven’t worked my arse off in that fecking forge for months to walk away now,” Sygurn told her. For emphasis, he brandished the gore-covered hammer he had wielded the night before. “Any more vermin who come against us will get a taste of this.”
“This is our home,” Aleida added, taking hold of Ryma’s hand when she reached out to the Tuhlvyr. “We cannot abandon it so easily, not with Ruhlin still gone. If he returns to find us fled—”
“You heard what she said,” Deyna interrupted, casting a hand at Velkar and turning to Guthnyr. “You have been betrayed. Your leader is dead or captured. He’s not coming back and if we stay here we’ll all die.”
Aleida glared, the heated retort rising to her lips forestalled by an unexpected voice.
“She’s right,” Iyaka said. Having relieved a slain enemy of his bow and quiver, she kicked the body down the slope.
“This was just one war party, and the Vulksa have many more. They follow Olchar’s word without question.
If he has decreed that we must die, they’ll see it done, no matter the cost.” She joined Deyna in directing a steady gaze at Guthnyr.
“We should make for the Sahlrak. Tirohk is still encamped there.”
“And what guarantee do we have he was not part of this treachery?” Deyna enquired.
“The Vehlkasa are sworn to the Telchak,” Iyaka replied, teeth bared in anger. “Once given, our word cannot be broken.”
Silence descended as Guthnyr felt the unwelcome weight of their collective expectation.
He pondered what Ruhlin might have done, Felnir too.
They had always seemed so sure, so lacking in hesitation.
Something, he realised belatedly, he would do well to emulate.
“Gather the pack horses and load up the weapons from the forge,” he said.
“And all the food we can carry. We need to be far from here by twilight.”
“We can’t…” Sygurn began but Guthnyr silenced him with a glower.
“We always knew this place wasn’t forever,” he said. “Those fleeing chains cannot afford the luxury of a home.” Softening his tone, he grasped Sygurn’s shoulder. “We’ll find you another forge, my friend. For now, we have to go.”
While the others went about readying themselves for the march, Guthnyr lingered at the firepit. The largest of Velkar’s wolves bared its teeth at him until abruptly falling calm, presumably at his mistress’s instruction, although she continued to sit in silence.
“I feel your sorrow,” Guthnyr ventured. “For your lost… children.”
She gave a barely perceptible nod, her wolves tightening the circle around her.
“I know well how vengeance can sink its claws into a mind,” Guthnyr went on. “And I won’t seek to bar you from yours. But I have learned that, to slake that thirst, you must be alive to taste its sweetness. Which, I promise you, will come in time.”
Velkar blinked, the dull misery slipping from her gaze as it focused on his face. “What do you need of me?”
“There may be more Vulksa between here and the Sahlrak. Also, more making for this mountain.”
Letting out a slow, weary sigh, Velkar got to her feet.
She spent a moment running her hands over the muzzles of the three wolves, the beasts now rearing in excited anticipation.
The Teyrak elder said something in Morvek, a soft, fond murmur, then the wolves were off, scattering snow as they pelted in different directions.
“They will scout the approaches to the Sahlrak,” she told Guthnyr. “And guard our rear as we march.”
Guthnyr nodded. “My thanks.” Noting again the grey pallor of her features, he realised she and her wolves must have covered a considerable distance to bring them warning the night before. “You should eat before we leave,” he said, regretting he didn’t have time to permit her to sleep.
“I’ll hold you to your promise,” she said as he began to stride away.
Glancing back, he saw a new animation to her face, cheeks reddening and a fresh gleam in her eye.
Until now, he had thought her a handsome woman for whom the term “elder” seemed faintly absurd.
Now she appeared more like the embodiment of some dark spirit from the uglier tales contained within the Altvar Rendi.
Velkar smiled, the way her lips peeled back from her teeth an unnerving echo of her wolves. “For,” she said, “I intend to slake my thirst in full.”
The march to the Sahlrak was both tense and tiring.
Guthnyr allowed no more rest than strictly necessary and maintained a fulsome watch as they slept.
Velkar reported that her wolves found no evidence of more Vulksa save a faint scent on the westerly wind.
“They thought they would kill us all at the first try,” she said when they gathered at the campfire the first night.
“A foolish mistake, one Olchar will be keen to put right. He has to silence us, lest the other clans learn what he did.”
“We know the what of it,” Deyna said, voice muffled by the scarf covering her face.
“But not the why.” The Tuhlvyr had attempted to spend the day riding a pack horse, one of those captured from her baggage train after the battle south of the Sahlrak.
However, the animal was not bred for riders and proved fractious, forcing her into the unaccustomed ignominy of walking.
Seeing how Velkar’s lip began to curl in response to being addressed by a high caste Rulchakin, Guthnyr interjected: “It’s a fair question. Why would one of your most renowned elders turn on us? Why deliver the Telchak into the Vortigurn’s hands?”
Velkar and Iyaka exchanged short, uncomfortable glances, but neither offered an answer.
“It seems the Morvek are as rich in secrets as we are,” Deyna muttered.
“There have long been rumours,” Iyaka said, tone sullen with reluctance. “Little more than gossip, but spoken for so long it became like one of your legends.”
“Rumours?” Guthnyr prompted. He gave an impatient snort when Iyaka and Velkar exchanged another glance.
“The Uhltcha Trah,” Velkar said. Her tone indicated a considerable discomfort with the phrase, as if she spoke something foul, or perhaps heretical. Guthnyr had heard enough Morvek by now to recognise Uhltcha as meaning falsehood, but the second word eluded him.
“What is false?” he pressed.
“Peace,” Iyaka said. “Uhltcha Trah means the Liar’s Peace.
” She cast a wary glance at Velkar before speaking on.
“Those who talk of it do so quietly, for the elders speak ill of any who spread what they term foul speech. It comes from the time of greatest sorrow, when the Morvek were forced away from the Deep Fjord. Once great clans were so reduced to pitiful remnants by Rulchakin savagery and disease our light may have been forever snuffed from these lands. Yet, it was not. The elders will claim that it was through the courage and guile of our warriors that we survived. But there is another, darker tale.”
She fell silent, casting a pointed glare at Velkar.
It seemed the burden of telling this story was one to be shared.
“The tale of the Uhltcha Trah claims that the elders in those terrible days made a secret compact with the Vortigurn,” Velkar said.
“In return for forsaking the verdant lands along the Deep Fjord, his people would not follow those Morvek who fled into the west. It is said they were made to speak solemn oaths that they and their descendants would maintain this compact for as long as the Vortigurn held the throne of Nihlvar.”
“You mean the Vortigurn and his heirs,” Guthnyr said. This statement heralded an interval of quiet bafflement until Deyna let out a laugh of realisation.
“There is, and has only ever been one Vortigurn,” she said. “I assumed you knew.”
He thought this must be another of her taunts, until he saw her expression mirrored in his companions.
“That would mean his reign goes back centuries.” Guthnyr let out a laugh of his own, one that faded quickly when it became obvious they were not sharing a joke at his expense. “You mean to tell me the Vortigurn is… immune to age? An undying soul?”
“Age? Yes,” Deyna said. “As for dying. It’s never been properly tested.”