For the Sake of the Exercise

“What are we doing, exactly?” Engel asked. He and Jente stood atop a glacier in the middle of a fjord, swaddled in furs to protect them against the bite of the winter wind.

“Stealth exercise,” Jente said absently. She shaded her eyes and scanned the horizon. “There’s a sword in the ice behind me. One of them must approach without being seen and then defeat one of us in battle for the sword.”

Engel blinked. “They’ll never defeat one of us.”

“We’re going to pretend we’re mortal for the sake of the exercise - there are no more of us. Yet.”

Runic Names

“What kinds of names are those, anyway?” Engel asked.

Thurisaz and Hagalaz were a pair of giant twins, red-headed, with full beards. There was something amusing about the fact that they were terrified of Jente, who was less than half their size.

“Not real names, sir,” Thurisaz said. “Not people names, really. Just - letters. From our alphabet, as it were.”

“What kind of an alphabet?” Engel asked.

“Runes,” Hagalaz said. “Jente teaches us to read and write.”

“Right,” Engel said. He raised his sword. “All right! Show me a backhand sweep!”

Both twins obeyed. Swords sang through the air.

Earn Your Keep

“Mission? What mission?” Engel asked in a low voice.

Jente lifted her head and called out, “Thurisaz, Hagalaz, don’t drop your shield arm! Keep it up or you’ll lose a limb.” She continued working on the boot, puzzling over the soft leather of the sole.

“What mission?” Engel asked again, nudging her in the ribs.

She sighed. “Did you listen to anything Old Master said during your graduation ceremony?”

“Mostly that I’d get to come down off the mountain and finally see some women again,” Engel said. “Why?”

Jente sighed. “Never mind. Come help me teach - earn your keep already.”

The Mission

Three days later, out on the ice, Jente was drilling the lads and lasses in keeping their feet in slippery places; she was also toying with a pair of boots, experimenting with ways to create more traction.

Engel stood at the edge of her demarcated battlefield beside her and watched her work.

“Are you punishing me?” he asked finally.

“It’s not my place to punish you,” she said.

“Then why are we here in this hellishly cold place with these ghost-pale children teaching them to fight?”

“We have a mission, and some of us are working to complete it.”

Unthinking Acquiescence

“What are you doing?” Engel asked. He leaned in the doorway of the mead hall, watching Jente showing a young man how to use a staff.

“Training our new troops,” she said.

Engel raised an eyebrow. “Since when do we need new troops? Is there a war going on that I missed?”

“Old Master has requested that I train new troops,” she said, and turned away from him. Engel eyed the golden-haired, ice-eyed youth and freely admitted to himself that the lad was bigger and stronger than anyone Engel had ever seen. Still, Jente’s unthinking acquiescence was disturbing.

New Names

Rastaban didn’t know how long he’d hung from the posts of the fortress walls, arms strained beyond feeling, lashed by the icy wind and driving blizzard snows. He just knew that he replayed Old Master’s angry words over and over again while he hung there, cringing at the disappointment in his teacher’s eyes.

The pale-faces of the north accepted his immortality when Kana came to let him loose, and they seemed uncaring of Kana’s easy magic and Rastaban’s easy gift. They called him Engel, and they called Kana Jente, and after a while, Rastaban answered to his new name.

Cold and Colder

Rastaban had the entirety of the march toward the white kingdoms to ponder what he had done. Kana said nothing. She didn’t bother to eat or drink, and some nights she didn’t even sleep. Kana hollowed out a tree trunk with a small knife and her bare hands; Rastaban hovered awkwardly on the sidelines until his guilty conscience moved him to carve a pair of oars.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Rastaban asked.

Kana pointed toward the sky, toward the north star.

“It’ll be cold,” she said.

Rastaban didn’t think it could get much colder than it already was.

His Own Good

Kana stood at the edge of the grave she’d dug - with her bare hands, because sometimes she just needed to feel.

“He was too strong for his own good,” Rastaban said.

“We were supposed to be for his good,” Kana said. She lowered Andrev into the grave, smoothed her thumbs over his eyelids in a last farewell. She buried his spear and his pipes beside him, and then she lifted her voice in a song to the wind, to carry his spirit away to eternal peace.

“You don’t really still believe in that, do you?” Rastaban asked.

Kana turned away.

Interlude 6

The third wound in his shoulder had half-knit and no longer bled, but it still burned with every motion. He stood on the windy steppes, gazing down at a freshly-dug grave. In the distance, two figures walked. For one moment, his eyes flashed golden-bright, but then they returned to lifeless, dark brown. He closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. The moonlight turned his hair ageless white, and for one moment, he seemed little more than a ghost. Then he opened his eyes - now sea-blue, glowing with trinity-fire, and turned toward the ocean.

Your Kind

The hunters recoiled, spears drawn up to throw.

Kana sank to her knees beside Andrev’s body where it was broken and bruised, scooped it up. Wards shimmered in the air around her, and the first few spears bounced off it. She could feel the next spears chipping away at the invisible barrier, but she knew the people were too afraid to get too close.

“Fine,” a woman spat. “Take him. Your kind isn’t welcome here anyway.”

Kana turned to her, eyes dark and wet. “He was your kind, too. If you’d just loved him, he would have been your kind.”

You Will

“Don’t touch him!” she growled.

Behind her, she could sense Rastaban stirring. She didn’t care what he had to say - he’d made enough of a mess as it is.

The woman screamed, and the hunters whipped around, leveled their spears at her.

“She was dead!” one of the said. “We killed her!”

“She’s another demon - burn her too!”

Kana sketched runes in the air with easy hands, clawed open her own palms to use her blood to stain them. “You will not touch me,” she said. “You will give me the boy, and I will give him a proper burial.”

Just to Make Sure

Kana struggled to push herself up, but it was too late. Another hunter, and then another lunged in, driving his spear into Andrev’s body. There was no response, just the sick, slick slide of stone through flesh, the sluggish gurgle of blood.

“It’s dead,” one of the hunters said.

They stood around the corpse, staring. Then a hunter lifted his spear over his head and cheered. “The demon is dead!”

The other hunters joined in the cheer.

And then a woman said, “We should burn its body, just to make sure it doesn’t come back.”

Kana managed to stand up.

No Response

The sound of tearing flesh and bone made Kana wish her ears were bleeding. Andrev couldn’t even screen. His body jerked once, twice, and then went still. The dog growled, thrashing its head wildly, and then it spat a piece of bloody flesh and bone into the grass. The hunters stared, awed and confused. The dog took a step back, then another, and swayed. It crumpled to the ground, a woman once more.

“He’s dead,” one of the hunters said. “The demon is dead.”

“How can you be sure?” another asked.

A third prodded Andrev with a spear. No response.

The Final

The hunters circled Andrev and the woman warily, spears poised to throw once the battle had settled into two static forms.

Kana lay still on the grass, hyperalert, listening. Andrev was going to kill the woman, and he would never receive the answers he needed, about who he was or what he could do, but -

Quick as a snake striking, the woman reared up, shifting into a dog mid-lunge, and she sank her teeth into Andrev’s skull, jaws locked around the final horn. He let out a cry and toppled backward, humanoid once more. The dog shook its head.

Slowly

She was devious, quick, but he was just as fast, just as strong, and half a dozen blows in he knew. Which way she would move, where she would strike, how fast she could turn. The battle raged in cycles, from ground to air to ground again, claws and beaks, talons and tails, poison and quills.

It ended when he had her pinned to the ground, one paw on her throat, his eyes animal-silver and her eyes wide, human.

Kill her, the voice inside him whispered. Survive.

He leaned down on her throat slowly, watching her struggle to breathe.

He Smiled

“Andrev, no!” Kana cried.

He didn’t hear her, not really. One moment his body was a slow-burn of agony, the next he was lightning, quicksilver, moving through the air faster than a blink. Then he coalesced into anger and hurt, body lupine-sleek and darkly-furred, and he tasted-heard-felt the satisfying crunch of a human spine in his jaws.

Kir was dead. Andrev turned on the blonde woman, rose onto his hind legs, shifted into a form that was neither man nor wolf, that was all strength and all rage, and he flexed his claws.

He smiled.

Survive

Survive, a voice inside him whispered.

You are stronger than them all. Survive.

The light was blinding. Andrev was dizzy, confused, - he couldn’t feel. Anything. Not his body, not the grass --

You still have power.

But then he could feel the sluggish sting, the burn of deadly-poison-gold. Kir was cutting him again. His last horn. No. If Kir cut him off, he could die, it would all be over --

He arched his back and roared.

Beneath the roar, he could hear people screaming. He opened his eyes and he was on his feet, and the earth was cracking.

See The Light

Andrev couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew Kir was standing over him, crowing, hoisting another horn high. Three gone. Two to go. Andrev wondered if he would die before Kir reached the last one.

Andrev was cold, but his body couldn’t shiver. Something inside him was splitting apart, fracturing, breaking, like the shaft of a spear dashed over a boulder again and again.

Kir leaned over him again, and he was hissing, snake-like. “This one is for me.” And he drove the golden blade down.

Andrev’s world vanished, and he saw light.

What Happens When

Kana had to play dead, marshal her strength. Every time she moved, one of the hunters stabbed, disabled her again. If they were distracted by the spectacle - if Kir kept up the torture long enough - she could heal fully, pull herself together. She could save Andrev.

Rastaban was face-down in the grass with a spear in his back. He wouldn’t be moving for a while.

Andrev screamed again, writhed, and the scent of blood in the air thickened. Kir hacked doggedly at his opponent, and lightning lashed the sky.

Kana thought, This is what happens when a god dies.

For My Father

Andrev couldn’t think for the pain. Kir rose up, the tiny horn clutched in his fist, and turned to the cheering, roaring hordes of hunters who had come to see the monster laid low. Andrev tried to move, to push himself up so he could crawl away, but his body had betrayed him, and he was frozen on the ground. A hollow ache gnawed in his chest, a counterpoint to the raging fire in his skull.

“The creature is laid low,” Kir said. “This is for my father.”

And he knelt to cut off the second one.

Andrev screamed again.