Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2) (12 page)

“You’re not fine. You’ve been dozing at the table since you sat down, and perking up at the thought of wringing some scrawny little princeling’s neck doesn’t count as being awake. It’s been a long, tiresome journey, coming this far, and I know you’re worried and filled to the bristling rim over it all, but I won’t have you falling asleep on the job. Not now, when so much depends on you. Home with you. Rest. I’ll find someone to fill in for you today.”

“But the training exercises…” he started.

“Can be overseen by someone else. I’ll send Miken over. He’ll whip the whelps into shape.” Logren opened his mouth to further protest, but Hodon narrowed sharp blue eyes and added, “Don’t argue with me, boy. Go home and sleep off this day. Spend time with my daughter and grandson. They both miss you. Tomorrow is another one, and there will be just as much work to be done when the sun comes up.”

“As you wish,” he gave in, though there was still reluctance in his voice and Vilnjar actually wondered just how well he would obey the order he’d been given.

“And I don’t want to hear any tales about you visiting the taverns today either.” Turning his attention toward Vilnjar, he said, “Logren tells me you’ll be working for Broehn Black-Hammer’s daughter, Frigga, at the forge?”

“I…” He hesitated, a flush of warmth darkening his cheeks as he lowered his gaze. “I wouldn’t exactly call it working. She’s asked me to entertain her with stories while she works, that’s all.”

“Storytelling is work,” Hodon declared. “Especially if she’s paying you for it. She
is
paying you for it?”

Nodding reluctantly, it felt odd talking about Frigga. He knew it was absurd to think he could keep her all wrapped up inside his own mind, save for the moments he was with her, but discussing the job she was paying him to do felt like a strange invasion into his private thoughts.

She’d asked him to work for her, telling her stories she’d never heard before while she worked. For each story new to her ears, she would give him silver pieces until he earned enough to pay her to craft him a sword she felt fairly certain he would one day need. Even after he confessed to her he had no interest in the brutal arts of war, she insisted and he’d relented so easily because the opportunity to sit with her while she worked, to get to know her felt like a gift.

The mere thought of her made him feel giddy as a young pup, and he was so elated he could scarcely hide the grin twitching at the corners of his mouth, a grin he was sure was bound to get him into trouble sooner or later.

“Well good for you,” Hodon decided, though Logren didn’t seem to agree because he rolled his eyes and lifted a hand to stifle a yawn indicating boredom with the whole topic of conversation. “But I’d advise you keep your head down and your eye on her father. Don’t get on his bad side, Vilnjar. Broehn is very particular about who spends time with his daughter. We will need him working the forge night and day to ensure we have weapons enough to arm our men and women if it comes to battle. I don’t want any trouble with him.”

“Of course not,” he agreed.

“Now, I’ve other things to attend to today, so if the two of you don’t mind I’ll take my leave. I meant what I said, Logren,” he added. The archmage tucked the roll of parchment into his robes and shuffled backward as Hodon pushed his chair away from the table with a loud scrape of wood across stone. He narrowed a serious glare at his son-in-law and added, “I don’t want to hear a single word about you working today, or drowning your sorrows in the taverns, are we clear.”

“Yes, sir,” Logren offered a reluctant nod, and lazily wrenched himself from his own chair, stretching the muscles in his back as he rose. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s told Viina to lace my ale when I get home so I pass out,” he muttered after Hodon left. “There’s too much to be done, too many preparations to be made. How he can expect me to sit by and do nothing…”

“Perhaps he only wants you at your best,” Vilnjar interjected, falling into step behind the other man as he headed toward the doors. He followed him through the hallways leading to the double doors opening into the city, nodding politely at the guards before they passed through and into the brisk morning air.

He instantly wished he’d worn more than a cloak, the bitter flutter of wind cutting straight through the fabric of both cloak and tunic and teasing goose bumps across his skin. He could feel the hairs on his chest and arms tightening and rising, and he shook off the chill with a visible shudder that garnered a strange look from Logren he soon realized was an unspoken response to his statement.

Everyone else dressed in the same manner, and he hadn’t heard anyone complaining about the cold, but all morning he’d been shivering against it and longing for a day as warm as the Edgelands in summer. Drawing the folds closer and hugging his chest with both arms, he ignored Logren and thought of warm things.

“I am always at my best,” he growled.

Vilnjar didn’t argue. He’d learned during the last few days it was pointless. Logren was always right, at least as far as the man himself was concerned, and there was nothing he seemed to love more than someone fool enough to bicker with him.

Without the challenge of a reply to egg him on, Logren didn’t bother trying to goad him into another argument he couldn’t win. Instead, he cut across the cobbled street, heading away from Hodon’s hall and toward the blacksmith across the street. Strange, he thought, the other man’s unwillingness to try and keep the banter going.

Since the Light of Madra and her two companions departed on a quest that promised to wake the wolf spirits trapped within every man, woman and child in Dunvarak, Logren was almost muted and sullen. Not so easily riled as he’d been even just the day before, Vilnjar wondered if not having his sister to show off for brought him down a few notches, closer to the man he was on a day to day basis, rather than the one he’d tried to be to impress Lorelei and win her over.

From the moment they’d met at the base of Great Sontok, Logren was as boisterous and obnoxious as his father, Rognar, had once been. Inexhaustible, arrogant about his capabilities and ready to take on the world, the man walking beside him on the street was no longer any of those things, and he suspected it was only a matter of time before he wouldn’t be able to fight how tired he was or Hodon’s insistence he take a day.

His gaze shifted across the street, toward the blacksmith’s porch where Broehn Black-Hammer worked the forge alone. His eyes scanned the area for signs of Frigga, but he didn’t see her and his heart instantly sank. He’d been hoping for just a moment’s contact with her before he took his place the following morning at the forge, but all he managed was a glimpse that morning during the procession as the three heroes-to-be departed from the city on their horses.

How his spirit soared when she spied him and smiled almost shyly as they made eye contact. It was almost enough to tug his mind from the troubling thoughts worrying him as he watched his little brother’s horse disappear through the gates. He’d looked for her at the smithy when he and Logren made their way to the hall, but she hadn’t been there.

The giddiness that came with the anticipation of just a glimpse of her faded, and he quickened his pace to catch up with Logren. The other man barely noticed, even when he stumbled over his own feet and bumped shoulders with him as they walked.

Vilnjar righted and steadied himself again, his face flushing with the foolishness of his behavior, and then he cleared his throat to broach the subject of his residence. He’d been thinking about it since he’d laid down for bed the night before. Surely now that Finn and Lorelei were gone, Logren and his family wouldn’t want him around. He couldn’t expect to impose on them, not when he took into consideration how frequently the two of them were prone to arguing—especially when they drank.

Only a few hours passed since the Light of Madra and her two companions made their way through the city, departing on the quest meant to wake the wolf spirits trapped in the flesh of every man, woman and child in Dunvarak and all he could think about was how out of place he felt. How distant from his own people and from his family, he felt, as if he had no place in the world anymore at all.

“Logren, I wondered if there might be somewhere you could recommend for me to stay while I’m here? Maybe a room in one of the taverns or something?”

It had been on his mind the last few days, niggling at his consciousness after he learned his brother would be leaving him behind to take the journey of a lifetime with his mate. There was even talk Finn might not return from the journey, but Vilnjar hadn’t given himself much time to really think about it because he knew it would make him crazy. After everything he’d given up to come along and watch after his brother, he’d realized too late he had no choice but to let Finn go and do what he was meant to do. To make matters worse, the people of Dunvarak seemed to respect Finn because he was already accepted as Lorelei’s mate, even though Lorelei herself might have had a thing or two to say if anyone bothered to ask her.

He only knew he was an outsider in a strange new land, and though the people of Dunvarak were not much different than the U’lfer, he was not one of them. The few faces he did recognize, men like Hodon, who’d known his father, did not see the little boy anymore, but a grown man they knew nothing about except for what they gleaned from rumors over the years. He was a known member of the Council of the Nine, the very same council who turned Rognar over to Aelfric and signed away the U’lfer’s rights and freedoms.

“My house isn’t good enough for you now that your brother is gone?” Logren sneered over his shoulder at him, mustache twitching with derision and offense.

“It’s not that.” Vilnjar shook his head, trying to find a careful way to word what came next. “It’s just… I didn’t expect you’d want me to stick around once they were gone. That’s all. I thought you would expect me to… I don’t know, find another place.”

Logren stopped in the middle of the street and spun around to face Vilnjar with eyes narrowed in anger, both bright red brows bristling above them like streams of flickering fire. “And why wouldn’t I want you around? You think I only extended the courtesy of my hospitality to you to appease my sister?” The hardness in his voice was more complicated than simple offense. If Vilnjar didn’t know any better, he’d say Logren’s feelings were hurt. “Do you think if you’d come all this way without her, I’d have just left you on the other side of the mountain and gone on about my business?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

Vilnjar was still hugging his arms tight across his chest and when he leaned back to study the man across from him it looked almost as if he’d planned the whole thing very smugly. They did little else but bicker and try to one-up each other since they’d been reunited at the foot of Great Sontok, a near lifetime of bitterness and resentment hovering between them both like a dark cloud no wind was powerful enough to move so the light of the sun could break through.

“You don’t… Honestly? Because you were…” Logren stopped himself, words tumbling senselessly through his lips, head shaking, lines in his face softening as he started to relax and let go of his irrational anger. “You were only like a brother to me for the first nine years of my life. My first real friend. We made plans together, you and I. There were so many things we were meant to do.”

“That was another life...”

“It was this life,” he said. “This is the same life, Vilnjar. We are still the same people we were twenty years ago, only grown and altered by the events that shaped us and made us into men. Maybe we were parted by circumstances beyond our control, made to think the worst about each other…”

“I never thought the worst of you.”

“But it doesn’t change the fact that we were close as brothers once.”

He seemed to have no regard for the bodies shuffling past them on the walk, the craning necks straining as they ducked around and on their way, trying desperately to hear the exchange between them.

Lowering his tone, he went on to add, “I thought of you every day, Vilnjar. Right up until the day you walked back into my life. I thought of you fondly, even when our sources told us you’d plunked your arse down in a cozy chair among the Council of the Nine. I convinced myself you weren’t like them because I remembered you and wished with all I had the gods would bring us back together again. But you met me at Great Sontok with resentment and loathing I do not understand, no matter how hard I try to wrap my brain around it.”

“I spent almost twenty years thinking you were dead! Do you have any idea what I went through? My mother dragging Rue and me through the streets as Vrinkarn burned behind us, knowing in my heart there was no way you or anyone else I cared about could have made it out of those fires. I mourned your loss with as much sorrow as I spent on my own father! Of course I resent you, Logren. You went on as if those of us who cared about you had no right to know you were even alive.”

He was shouting, hadn’t even realized the pitch of his voice until he noticed how quiet the street grew around them. Suddenly embarrassed, his face felt flush and hot, and he took a step back, lowering his head as if hiding his shame would make the looks and the heat disappear. Vilnjar cleared his throat, only tentatively lifting his head to find Logren staring at him in softened disbelief.

“Well, I’m sorry about that, but what did you want me to do? Write you a letter?”

“I don’t know, something. Anything… But there was nothing. Nothing but the grief and the loss of everything, everyone.”

“We were in hiding down here, for crying out loud. No one was supposed to know we were here until the time was right. I said I was sorry. I don’t know what else you want me to say?”

How could sorry be enough to quell the pain and anger of twenty years’ resentment? And yet there was something in the other man’s eyes that softened the hardness inside Vilnjar, made him long to set aside his bitterness and embrace the fact that death could be overcome in some ways. After all, the gods brought them back together, hadn’t they? Only it wasn’t enough, no matter how much he wanted it to be.