The Wolf's Call - Anthony Ryan

PART I

The raven’s blade

Cuts deep,

Laying bare my sins.

—SEORDAH POEM, AUTHOR UNKNOWN

LURALYN’S ACCOUNT

The First Question

There are many these days who call my brother a monster. They speak of his deeds, both dreadful and wondrous, as the work of a preternatural beast that had somehow taken on the form of a man to wreak the greatest havoc upon the world. There are others, in the more shadowed and wretched corners of the earth, who still call him a god, though when they do, the word is always spoken in a fearful whisper. Curiously, neither those who think him monstrous nor those who think him divine ever speak his true name, even though they know it as well as I. Kehlbrand, my brother whom, despite it all, despite every battle, conquest and massacre, I still contrive to love. But, I hear you ask, most honoured reader, how can this be? How is it possible to harbour love for a man who bathed half the world in blood?

In these quieter days, far removed from the frenzy and terrors of war, I have the leisure to consider such questions. As the years pass and ever more grey creeps into the once-auburn mane that crowns my head, as yet more aches beset my joints and I squint ever closer at these pages as I write, it is this question I ponder most.

Honoured reader, rest assured that I know you did not open this volume to endure an old woman’s complaints. No, you wish to know of my brother and how he came to reshape the world entire. But his story cannot be told unless I also tell mine, for we were bound tight, he and I. Through blood and purpose, we were bound tight. For many years it was as if we shared a soul, so mirrored was our intent, our commitment to our holy mission. But the mirror, I have come to learn, is the worst of liars, and no mirror ever remains uncracked by time.

It has taken me years of contemplation to identify the moment when I became truly bound to Kehlbrand. Perhaps it was when I slipped from the back of my first horse at age seven and spent several moments whimpering over the bleeding scrape on my knee. It was Kehlbrand, just a day or so shy of his twelfth year, who came to me. As the other children of our Skeld laughed and threw dung at the sobbing weakling, it was my brother who came and helped me to my feet. Already he was long of limb with the leanness of a born warrior, standing at least a foot taller than I, as he would for the rest of our lives.

“Druhr-Tivarik, little colt,” he said, voice soft with concern as he spoke the priests’ term for those who carry the Divine Blood, thumbing the tears from my eyes, “do not weep.” With that, he gave a smile of apology before forming his features into the customary mask of harsh disdain and delivering an openhanded slap to my face. The blow was hard enough to send me to the ground with the iron sting of blood on my tongue.

I spent several seconds blinking in confusion, although I was surprised to find my tears had stopped flowing. Looking up through bleary eyes, I saw Kehlbrand advancing on the other children. He made straight for the tallest, a burly boy a year his elder named Obvar, who was always to be found at the forefront of my tormentors.

“Druhr-Tivarik,” my brother repeated, delivering a closed fist directly into Obvar’s face, “cannot be judged by the merely mortal.”

The subsequent fight was both lengthy and bloody, becoming something of a legend amongst the youngsters of the Skeld. It greatly overshadowed the insult done to a child of the Druhr-Tivarik, which was soon forgotten. This, I later realised, had been Kehlbrand’s intention, for the priests were given to punishing such things harshly. When it was over, Obvar lay groaning on the ground, bleeding from numerous cuts, whilst Kehlbrand, no less bloody, remained standing. As is often the way with boys, in the days that followed, he and Obvar became the closest of friends, remaining sworn saddle brothers until one particular and very fateful day some twenty years later. But, honoured reader, it appears I am getting ahead of myself.

But no, important lesson though it was, we were not truly bonded that day. Nor, strangely, the morning after I had my first True Dream. You must understand that the power

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