They were in their own world. Even the sizzle of one last arrow flying uselessly into the fire didn’t distract any of them. Daniel stared at her dry brow, how the flames didn’t burn her as they crackled around Aldrik’s fingers, fingers she held. He was no fool.
“Thank you, Lord Taffl,” Aldrik said with forced formality.
“It is a pleasure to do my duty, my prince,” Daniel returned, finding a chill even within the inferno.
“You are dismissed.” Aldrik had yet to let go of her hand, and
Vhalla withdrew it slowly.
The flames shrunk to a wall facing the fortress and Daniel stepped away.
Aldrik motioned for her to fall in at his side. “My lady.” Vhalla fell into step with him and the fire wall followed as they walked.
“Do not waste your arrows and efforts,” Aldrik commanded the soldiers who had scrambled into battle ready positions. “They are not making an attack. They were after the Windwalker.”
One by one people seemed to relax, though they continued to stare. Vhalla focused forward, her eyes fixated on the prince’s back, making a futile attempt to still the racing of her heart. The romance, the joy had made her forget the truth: she was death.
She could’ve killed Daniel. Vhalla clenched her fists. She hated it, she hated it all. There would never be an escape from who she was; all that was left was to embrace it, to wear it like the tattered cape upon her shoulders.
Aldrik paused briefly, giving a pointed look at his father. Somewhere in their nonverbal exchange Vhalla could almost hear the challenge from the prince, the invitation for the Emperor to say or do anything against his open display of affection for her. The muscles in the Emperor’s face spasmed as he tightened his jaw.
Aldrik continued onward in silence.
The people parted for them as he escorted her back to the camp palace. The prince maintained the flame wall the entire time. Vhalla hardly noticed the increasing distance between her and the walled city of Soricium. Her hands trembled from squeezing them so tightly.
“Raise your hood.”
Vhalla obliged, pulling the heavy chainmail hood over her head. It was something she should’ve done from the start, she scolded herself angrily. Aldrik finally relaxed the flames a few steps away from the entrance to the camp palace. He ushered her within quickly, and she let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. It quivered, barely.
She struggled to keep up with his long strides as the room of majors and tables passed in a blur. They were suddenly in his room. Aldrik hastily closing the door behind her. His palms clasped over her trembling shoulders.
“Vhalla, my lady, my love, you’re fine now,” he soothed. She shook her head. “I may be, but they will not be.” Aldrik rounded her, staring into her tearless eyes.
“Can I go nowhere without someone trying to kill me?” Vhalla whispered. “The Emperor himself wishes it; some clearly side with him.” She motioned to her tattered cape. “The North thinks I am not even human.”
“I should have never let you go alone,” he cursed softly. “Not all wish you dead.” Aldrik’s mailed hand smoothed out her frizzy hair, unruly in its awkward length just beyond her shoulders.
The ink she had used to dye it had almost faded, and Vhalla had given up trying to tame it into a Western style. “Some look to you, they admire you. There are some who think you a demon and others a goddess.”
“I want to go home.” Her fingers scraped against his armor, desperate for purchase.
“I will take you there.” Aldrik grabbed her hands. “We will go together. We will return South, and you will stay by my side.”
Vhalla stilled.
“I need to Project.” She released her hold on him and whatever words had been brewing behind his eyes. It wasn’t the time for them. “No one can return until this ends.”
Aldrik nodded and helped her out of her armor before sitting at the small desk, already cluttered with papers. He pushed them around until he had a blank sheet before him. His quill was at the ready.
Vhalla sprawled out on the bed and took a deep breath. Home, Vhalla paused over the thought, staring at the ceiling. Somehow, she realized, home was no longer the farmhouse in the East or the four grand walls of the Imperial Library. Vhalla turned to Aldrik, but he was oblivious to her momentary attentions. Home had become wherever he was. And she would do what she needed to do to return to the palace with Aldrik.
Vhalla closed her eyes and slipped out of her body.
VHALLA STOOD BEFORE the massive entrance to the fortress. A dry moat had been dug out at the base of the stone walls, wide and deep. It was ready to swallow any who dared attack, ready for archers to rain arrows down from the walls upon the unfortunate souls.
The drawbridge was closed, a massive stone archway that was slotted nearly perfectly into the wall. The wall resisted her presence, and Vhalla had to force her way through. It was definitely something that had been crafted in part with magic.
I’m in, she reported back to Aldrik when she was stable again. “Excellent,” his voice echoed through her physical ears and back to her as clearly as if he stood alongside her. “Tell me what you see.”
It’s a dark and narrow hall. Some kind of pot hangs above, and it appears they also have rubble piled in chutes behind wedges that are attached to rope. Vhalla listened to the sound of his scratching quill, speaking only the necessities so he could keep up.
“They plan to close the gate as defense against a first wave,” Aldrik observed. “You have already earned your merit and you are only a step in.”
Forward, she spoke her progress, it opens up. There’s space before the second wall.
“Second wall?” Papers shuffling.
Yes, my parrot.
Aldrik’s deep chuckle resonated through her. “We’ve heard no mention of a second wall. Describe it.”
After the first wall there’s a stretch, maybe the width of four men, stretched head to toe, and then a second wall. There are catwalks connecting to the outer wall. But I only see one ground entrance. Vhalla proceeded around the perimeter of the circular city.
The walk was unnatural, and not just because she experienced it through Projection. The space between the walls hummed with magic, one radiating off the next. Vhalla stilled. There was an old power here. It seeped from the depths of the earth and fertilized the soil and the people who lived upon it.
Two Northerners passed on a catwalk above, engaged in a heated conversation in a thick language foreign to Vhalla. It wasn’t the strange and melodic dialogue that had entrapped her. It was the bow in the hand of one.
They repeated one word over and over with particular venom, Gwaeru.
Do you speak the tongue of old Shaldan? Vhalla asked as the two archers passed across the catwalk and into the interior wall.
“I barely speak Western,” Aldrik sighed.
I think Gwaeru means Windwalker.
“Now how could you possibly come across that tidbit?”
I believe I just saw the woman who tried to shoot me down, Vhalla thought darkly.
“Remember her face so that I may have the pleasure of killing her myself.” Protectiveness gave an edge to Aldrik’s voice that would sound bitter to anyone else. But, to her ears, it resonated warmly.
I’m going to go through the second wall. It seems older, made of a different sort of stone than the outer one. It feels like solid magic. Vhalla stood at the oppressive wall. The shifting currents of magic Vhalla saw all seemed to be stilled by the stone.
“We will need our best Groundbreakers then.” She could hear the scratching of Aldrik’s quill again.
Vhalla paused their conversation to pass through the wall. It completely muddled her magical senses and, for a panicked moment, Vhalla thought she’d somehow fallen into her Channel again. She pushed forward, desperate for air. The ground would smother her magical form alive if she let it.
On the other side, Vhalla thought she could breathe again—metaphorically speaking
at least—until she saw the scene before her. By the Mother ...
“What is it, Vhalla?” Aldrik asked worriedly.
Aldrik ... Vhalla tried to process what she saw.
The palace was a magnificent display of architecture, like the grandest tree house a child could ever dream. Stone and wooden buildings were connected by arched walkways suspended at every level. It was as if someone had hollowed out the palace in the south and exposed its innards on the outside, a spider’s web of narrow footways and tunnels. The trees were so old and tall that some had been fossilized, or magically turned to stone, others had been carved into and hollowed out to make living spaces.
The castle grew denser as it moved upward and inward. The highest center point had a long, single catwalk extending from it, an access point that had only walkways leading into it. Connected to the access point were other rooms and buildings. Vhalla had no doubt that the Chieftains made their bed in the highest point.
But it was not the architecture that gave her pause. Nor was it the seemingly impossible construction. What made Vhalla stop in her tracks were the people.
“Vhalla, what is it?” Aldrik repeated into the silence.
Vhalla continued to ignore him as the scene settled on her. Northern men and women of every shape and size had built hovels within the inner wall, a tent city that mirrored the surrounding Imperial army’s. The palace seemed to be housing more than just the people who had lived and worked there previously. A great number of refugees had set up camp, fleeing from the encroaching Southern army. There were too many people, even for such a massive space, so everyone seemed to be on top of someone else.
Their quiet and somber faces imprinted themselves on her memories. Life continued. People went about their daily tasks. Children played, women tended to livestock, men cooked and mended things that needed mending. But all the shoulders sagged with the heavy weight of truth.
It hit her at once. It was an earth-shattering and humbling revelation. It made the anger and bloodlust vanish in the wake of shame. It made every night she’d spent wishing the Northerners dead for Sareem, for Larel, seem less meaningful.
These people were not mindless killers.
They were not a faceless enemy that was half wild and half mad. They were not less than human. They were not different from her just because they came from somewhere else, spoke differently, dressed differently, or looked different.
They were just like her. They were people who had lost their homes, their possessions, and likely their families as they fled to the last safe place they had, the last sacred place that was still their home before the Southern Empire swallowed it up and took their names and history and consumed them, turning them into “the North”.
Everything Vhalla had heard and learned about the war had been from the mouths of the Empire. It was the collective tongue that wagged on behalf of the Emperor. It had been watered down through excuses and explanations to seem logical. But there was nothing logical about this. This was not for faith, or peace, these people died for greed.
“Vhalla, say something,” Aldrik demanded.
She had thought she knew what war was, but as their empty eyes and too-thin bodies etched themselves onto her soul, Vhalla realized she knew nothing at all. They were all boys and girls playing at war, writing their own songs the bards would sing. But the bards never sang about this.
Suddenly the faces of the people she had killed came back to her.
We are monsters.
Vhalla was frozen in time. Those people, it had seemed so justified, so logical at the time. She realized she was the one who had invaded their home. She rode with the people who were destroying their way of life. Now she came to help deliver the final blow. Shaldan had not been a war-torn state until the Empire had made it that way.
“Vhalla, you are not a monster,” Aldrik said firmly. His voice was louder and she felt a strange warmth wash over her cheeks. “What do you see?”
She knew he was away from his papers by the proximity of his voice, by his hands on her face. He asked for her sake, not for him or the war.
They’re huddled in mass. There are so many people, but most don’t look like they are warriors. She began to walk through the tent camp. There are children, Aldrik.
“Inside the walls?” he asked.
Yes, with their families, or perhaps not. I don’t know ... They’re so thin. Vhalla saw the way the clothes hung off some of them.
“The siege has gone on for more than eight months now,” he explained. “But we pressed upon them more than a year ago. Their stocks must be low. Can you find out where they keep their food stores?”
There are children! Vhalla exclaimed, horrified. She watched two boys play, somehow oblivious to the adults around them whose eyes were empty from staring so long at bodies that would too soon be corpses.
“That doesn’t matter.”
Vhalla knew he was forcing himself to be stoic and strong, to be the prince that had to make a decision when there were no right answers. She heard the emotion under his words, the pain at having to say them. But she suddenly felt so angry at the fact that he could say them at all.
It does matter! I won’t murder children, she exclaimed. “You don’t have a choice.”
Vhalla tried to regain her composure. She fought and struggled with the scene before her, to justify it with the reasons the Empire had fed her all her life. The Empire fought for peace, but all Vhalla saw were desperate civilians clinging to weapons they’d never been trained to use. The Empire fought for prosperity—and children starved. The Empire fought for justice—and broke the laws it touted in the process.
Murderers, they were murderers under the command of the greatest murderer of them all.
I can’t, I can’t do this, Aldrik. Vhalla didn’t pull into her body once more; she didn’t go forward, she didn’t do anything.
“You can,” Aldrik encouraged.
We’re taking their home from them!
“Their home is lost,” the prince said grimly. “What do you think will happen if you refuse? Do you think you can stop the inevitable? This was set into motion long before we met, long before you had Awoken to your powers. The North was going to fall from the start. They dragged this out with their resistance.” Of course they did! It’s their home. Vhalla had never imagined she could find any understanding for the people she’d been brought here to kill. But in that moment, she wondered if she would fight with the Northerners if given the choice.
“Their Chieftain did this. She put her people here. And now she’ll see them starve before she forfeits her city.”
Did they have a choice?
“All leaders have the choice to take responsibility for their people,” Aldrik affirmed. “The North is a beast that’s wounded and bleeding. They’ll die with or without you. If they die faster, they’ll suffer less. You can give them that, my love.”
That’s horrible.
“It’s the truth,” Aldrik insisted defensively. But he did not deny that it was horrible.
She knew it was the case, but to hear it from his lips was harder than Vhalla could imagine. This was worse than anything she’d ever been put through, but he didn’t understand. Vhalla had envisioned she would be fighting on a battlefield. In every mental preparation for the battles to come, Vhalla had imagined herself squaring off against a faceless enemy. Something shapeless and corporal, she envisioned herself battling against the North as an entity, not as lay people.
This was an enemy who couldn’t stand. It was an enemy that was bent over and begging. Pleading for the last scraps of happiness they could stitch together with the remnants of their lives. She wasn’t here to be the Empire’s soldier or champion. She was here to be the greatest executioner the Empire Solaris had ever deployed.
It wasn’t war any longer: it was an impending massacre.
“The food stores,” Aldrik reminded, the magical warmth of his palms tingling across her Projected cheeks.
She had to move.
He was right. This would end with or without her and she could ease the suffering by hastening it. Vhalla wanted to sob and scream with each step forward. The people were oblivious to the enemy in their midst. Vhalla steeled her heart. She’d learned to do it as Serien and the shadow of the other woman protectively hovered over her.
As Vhalla ventured deeper, searching for a location where they kept their primary food stores, she heard something she hadn’t expected: Southern Common. Vhalla stilled, trying to make out the origin of the familiar words. The speaker was one of the Northerners, judging from their heavy accent.
Vhalla walked unimpeded into one of the massive trees. It reminded her of the Tower of Sorcerers, a large central room and a curving stairway that led up to the next landing. Vhalla followed the sounds upward and across an exterior hall to one of the constructed rooms attached to the outside of the tree.
“... you said they would be dead.” Vhalla passed through a door to see the archer from earlier pacing the small room.
“And you had promised to deliver the Windwalker to us, alive.”
Vhalla’s blood ran cold as she turned her attention to the other half of the space. A Western man, dirty and tired looking, sat one of the low, flat benches. His hair was greasy and his face gaunt. But he didn’t seem uncomfortable. He wasn’t chained nor bound. He sat easy in the Northerner’s company despite his Southern-style armor clashing oddly with his surroundings. “Why do you have such love for the Windwalker?” the woman sneered in her thick accent.
“My men kept their part of the bargain; they disoriented the troops at the Pass despite yours having gone rogue at the Crossroads and deciding to kill the girl after we had so generously hid and tended to them.”
Vhalla’s world stilled as the man spoke.
“Gwaeru,” the woman said a series of impassioned words that Vhalla could only assume were profane.
Vhalla studied the Northerner carefully. Long black hair was coiled into many braids, pulled into an intricate knot at the back of her head. She had skin the hue of dark melted chocolate, rich and glistening with the heat of the day. She wore the similar clothing of the other Northern warriors Vhalla had encountered: wrapped leathers and what seemed like an intricately embroidered pennon with a hole cut for her head, belted at the waist.