The Riven Shield (Mystic Seasons Mythopoeia I)

Chapter 5.1

Kerrigan stared into the coiling firelight and watched the flame's petals burgeon and despair in endless instants, one supplanting the next. Her mind was as empty as a Faerie song. This day had given her a first taste of violent death, against which her father's wasting passing seemed to have been a pleasant prelude. She had never seen so much blood as was splattered around their carriage, where the guards who had been about to consummate their betrayal assayed to fight the lone barbarian. And he had dismembered them.

Even when she had seen animals slaughtered there had not been so much blood. She shivered in her riding dress, already rumpled and stained. It was a cool garment, meant to be worn only in the privacy of the carriage. Out in the open, she was uncomfortable and exposed. She wrapped her arms around herself, and rubbed thin shoulders.

The barbarian returned to the fire with the corpse of a lynx in one hand. He carried no weapons, and he was still unclothed, but not a scratch gave witness to either the previous encounter or his capture of the lynx. He had broken its neck.

Kerrigan looked away, nauseated at the sight of him beginning to prepare the catch. Closing her eyes couldn't protect her from the slick, sobbing sound of an animal body being taken apart. He skinned it with his thumbnail.

When she opened her eyes again she was being offered hot strips of meat on a flat rock. With a mewl, she pushed it away, and the barbarian did not force it on her. He set it by the fire, which had been refueled, blazing brighter than before, and set about eating his own much larger portion. Nearly the whole animal. When he was finished he slipped away again, silent as a nightmare, and the fire dimmed slightly, or appeared to. It was probably only imagination and distress that played with her mind.

Kerrigan spent a while in contemplation of that statue, the one that looked like her, only perfected into marble. Grey veins pulsed beneath its white non-flesh, and in the flickering of the campfire the sculpture was nearly alive. In the emptiness of her awareness, there arose a question.

Is this why he took me? Is this why I am here, instead of with my mother? A sudden, wordless panic took her, and she grappled to her feet. She tried to mark her bearings, only to discover that she had none. Her legs moved of their own accord, lithe and long relative to her body. They carried her away from the rough campsite and deeper into the ruins.

She panted past mounds of rubble and half buried cornices, pillars that stood proud, or lorn, or else in tumbled heaps, like exhausted orgies. Her pace increased, and her breath turned ragged even as her slippers came to pieces, abraded by the gravel and shattered bricks. There was no hint of the barbarian, no hint of any life here. It was dark, for the moon slept these nights, and the stars were dim, occluded by the clouds.

Gods of the sky, she prayed, you laughing ones, let it rain and wash me from this terror. Let this not be real. Let me be married to some fat rich boor, and never see dear Aric in my life, but do not let this be.

The barbarian appeared before her as solid as a cliff. His hand swallowed her upper arm. His eyes arrested her.

"It is dangerous to run." His voice held no accusation. "You are never alone in this place. That is why no one comes here."

"Then why did you bring me here?" Kerrigan quavered.

The barbarians oddly smooth face twisted wryly. "To be alone." He herded her back to the camp. It was not nearly so far as she imagined. At least he did not do her the indignity of carrying her like a roll of cloth again. He was gentle enough, if implacable.

When they returned to the camp, the barbarian opened one of the packs to remove a musty and ancient fur, which he unrolled in a cleared space. After a moment, Kerrigan realized that it was the pelt of a bear, yet the fur was golden, tinged with bronze.