I.ii

In small villages like these, there isn’t much to occupy your time. You drink and you fight and you tell stories. Sometimes they’re true. Sometimes they aren’t.

A grandparent or elder would gather children around and tell them of heroes that fought monsters and discovered treasure and obtained greatness. These heroes would be plagued by visions from the gods as they slept, sometimes of things to come, but usually of past mistakes. The storyteller would exclaim that the hero woke from these dreams with a start, half-leaping from their resting place with a shout.

That wasn’t how it went.

In sleep the gods gave me fleeting glances of memories. The sound of the ocean around me. The crisp tang of sea air. Niko, young and round and topped with a crop of thick hair that blew in the soft breeze. And in the cracks of these times I saw spots of time further along; Niko now taller and leaner, head shaved to the scalp.

When I woke, it was lethargic and unhurried. My eyes opened and I saw darkness. It slowly dissolved into a background of hard stone. I wiped damp, stray hair and beads of sweat from my face and tried to hold on to the dangling threads of the dream I had awoken from.

As I was brought to consciousness, I glimpsed Niko’s face, older this time, what he probably looked like now. I heard metal clashing as we play-fought with blunted blades and laughter weaving through the echoes of the clangs. That was what woke me up. There hadn’t been much laughter in the barracks of Lycos. It hadn’t felt right.

I rose and dressed quickly. Outside my window, the sun was licking the edges of the horizon with rose-coloured wisps. Soon, the sky would be too bright to continue fighting against my dreams for restful slumber.

The bag of gold sat beside my bed. A reminder of what needed to be done today. I pulled on a rough tunic and hard leather armour. The latter wasn’t practical in the heat, but it helped whatever villagers I may speak to know that the mathos was roaming today. I needed information, and looking a certain way would help in that regard.

Sweat was already beading on my lower back as I stepped into the bright light of the village. The sea breeze picked at loose strands of hair and kissed my cheeks. I tasted salt on my tongue as I breathed in.

And then the questions began. The villagers were familiar with this person, the mathos. When I wore the armour and walked with their coin in my hands the role I played was simple. I asked and they answered.

Some didn’t still, after the many months I had spent here. They all knew about the woman who fights like a man. Mothers and daughters looked at me with fear to my face and whispered with disgust behind my back, the same kind given to whores and spinsters and other women who disobeyed their rules. Fathers and sons spoke about conquering me in combat or in bed. Or they simply chose to ignore me.

Yet when it came time for bone to meet bone and flesh to meet flesh, their blood sullied the ground, not mine.

I picked at the threads of the tapestry that weaved the Wolf of Lycos’ story. The unit was new. Lycos had sent many men to the mainland over the past handful of years, but this small fishing village was of no worth to anyone, until they decided it was. Six months ago they ran through town, let the villagers know of their presence, made them wordlessly aware of the camp they set up on the outskirts.

When it happened, I almost ran.

When I didn’t, I wrapped my wrist in linens to hide the thick black line tattooed into my skin and hoped no one noticed an unsullied bandage’s constant presence.

The Wolf’s unit wasn’t unusual in Lycos. No women were taken by force; those urges had been and would be punished. They distracted a soldier from his duty. The men were violent and angry, but the village was left unbloodied. Men were shoved in the streets if caught in the way of a march but hate-fueled crimes like what happened to that man at the kapalia were stamped out. Rage was to be thrown at the enemy, because a fire is only useful if it burns those you need dead. The Lycon who beat that villager was either wounded or deceased, by his comrades hands.

The Wolf’s face was never seen. He wore an intricate helmet, with shaped manes of fur carved in bronze and small, pointed ears adorning it. When he faced you, you only met fangs of metal and eyes cast in shadow.

An elder, made of old sinew and thin bone and topped with sly, knowing eyes, had glimpsed him unadorned in his mask when arriving. But it was like smoke in a breeze, vague and barely useful. The impression was a shaved head and hard features. That described any number of people, soldiers and Lycans especially. It described me not even a decade ago.

But I knew the village wanted this Wolf slain. This heavy, thick oppression gone from their town. Whatever the Lycans may say or do, soldiers kill for a living and will eventually do so for sport. Whatever small acts they commit now, the villagers know violence will hit one day, like lightning to a tree, and nothing will be the same afterwards.

The Lycans may not take women by force, but like all men, they do enjoy them. And when I approached the woman whose coin I held at my hip, I told her as much.

She looked into a space in the air around my stomach for three or four moments, with an even but pondering stare. Then, she rose to meet my eyes, stating:

“Three or four soldiers come into drink at a time. I can offer myself to one, but I can’t stop them all from following.”

I thought about that for a moment. The linen around my wrist had loosened during my travels around the village. A small patch of black, the corner of the solid line on my wrist, stared back at me as I looked down and fixed the bandaging.

“Then I’ll kill them.” I said.

She stared at me. If she didn’t like that response, it didn’t show on her face.

“Okay,” She responded.



---



Her next shift was that night. The kapalia the woman worked was small but neat, a tidy, warm glow on the outskirts of the village. Close to the Lycan camp, but only relatively. They didn’t want villagers wandering to their space on accident, so the base was only a thin glow in the distance.

No one of importance would be around when the Lycan soldiers walked out the door to the promise of a woman’s touch. Only drunkards and whores walked the streets then, and neither wanted to involve themselves in a brawl.

Across the way were stalls for the use of the rare travelling merchant that came into town. One was occupied by a dark-skinned man, wearing simple, loose clothes. His cart sat beside the structure, implying even more wares for sale than the ones displayed in front of him.

I spent the daylight hours eating and sleeping and exercising. In Lycos, the barracks had a small path that led into a circular clearing, filled with bags of sand of varying weights, ropes, rocks and a tree in the center, shorn of its foliage. For an hour a day, we would be watched as we lifted and pulled stone and sand, and as we pushed and pulled our own bodies of the ground and up branches. Once an activity became easy, they simply added more weight.

I had none of those luxuries. I hadn’t for years. Instead, I found a well-shaped tree in the nearby forest and cleared the area around it and did what I could. Stood on my hands. Pushed myself off the ground and clapped before I hit the floor. Climbed trees, hung from branches. Threw stones. When my muscles throbbed and felt tight with blood, I drew my sword and practiced forms until it almost fell from my hands.

In between the swings, I pictured my blade slicing Lycon flesh. That pushed me through the pain.

Night fell eventually. The merchant packed up his things and placed them in his cart. He followed a couple men into the kapalia, and as the sky darkened I took his place in the stall. I sat with my ass in the sand and my back against the wooden wall, the counter parallel to me, just high enough that I could see the entrance to the building across the way from under it. I was far back enough in the gloom that I would be just another wandering body settled someplace sheltered for the night. It wasn’t a sight you took much note of in this place.

I waited. It was a skill you cultivated like any other. My childhood had been spent waiting. When it fell on you to hunt food for your barrack, you entered the woods and waited in trees and bushes with bow in hand. On good nights, you would bring back a deer or bushels of rabbits, and your bunkmates and you would eat well until next weeks hunt began. On bad nights, or on nights another barrack spoiled your hunt out of spite, you returned with a handful of small creatures and knew you would only eat every other day.

When you entered the pit, you waited in tense silence and stared intently at the small muscles on your opponents body. You waited for the twitch of an ankle or a wrist, leading into a quick lunge or the flick of a blade.

When you stood guard outside your bunkhouse, you waited with your partner in hesitant expectation for an attack from another barrack, out of spite or revenge.

You fall into a twilight state when you stare at empty space long enough. Your breathing slows and your brain falls silent while absorbs everything around you. Movement tickles your senses but you don’t flinch away or dart towards it. You simply note it and continue your watch.

The men that the merchant followed inside left, eventually. The merchant didn’t follow them, which meant the Lycon soldiers were quite entertaining to this outsider or someone else had already been inside the kapalia. The man behind the counter had only one skill: the serving of alcohol. Conversation was not a strong point. I knew that from experience.

I hoped the merchant was simply forming a friendship with another man and not distracting the soldiers.

With that thought in mind, I waited some more.

The moon was bright enough to outshine even her warmer celestial brother, and the breeze rustled cloth and scuffed up loose sand, but neither of these penetrated the shelter of the stall, so I simply sat in stagnant darkness and watched.

The sound of the ocean, however, pierced the three wooden walls around me. I could hear it lapping at the land, and I closed my eyes for only a moment, feeling the ghost of slowly-cooling sand on my back as I remembered nights spent falling asleep on the shore to the calming cycle of the waves.

With the silent dark wrapped around me like a thin blanket, I caught a small waft of sharp tang from the beach. For a moment, a vision of Niko washed over me, clear as a reflection on still water.

That thread of peace was broken by the kapalia door. It creaked as it opened, a faint sound from across the way, but shrill enough to interrupt the journey of my wandering mind.

The village woman led the Lycans out. One followed close behind, the now-exaggerated swing of her hips like a pendulum held in front of his eyes. The other three men threw glances at the two, but left well-enough alone. They watched them turn the corner of the building and fall from sight, gave one more set of longing looks, and then left their friend to his own devices, probably hoping to get lucky the next night.

I rose from my place in the sand and waited behind the solid safety of the wooden wall as the two sauntered drunkenly back to their camp. They quickly become smudges in the night, and I walked with haste to follow the path of the woman and her new companion.

Hate is a strong emotion. It lets you endure things you never would for a chance to hurt its recipient. This woman and the rough, wet kisses she received over her jaw and neck were proof of that. The contempt in her eyes was a force of nature, and I knew she pictured the camp of men burning to the ground by her hand to continue playing her part.

The soldier was facing away from the entrance to the small space behind the kapalia, either by luck or the woman’s design. She pulled away as I closed in, confusing the man, whose slack, unknowing look only exaggerated as I hooked my foot behind the ankle he rested his weight on and kicked it forward. He landed on the sand with wide-eyes and a drunken exhale of breath.

And then the rage swelled, and his reflexes tightened and fought against the drink, and he began to rise as my knee took it’s place on his neck and pressed him strongly against the ground.

Clawed hands came to my thigh and pressed into skin, and then immediately slacked as the knife swam from the scabbard on my back and into the space above his eye, my hand guiding the metal like a parent teaching her child to navigate calm waters. I slammed the butt into his temple for good measure, knowing the lightning now shooting through his veins would be rapidly fighting the effects of the drink, not wanting him to realize he could try to buck me off.

Then, the point of the blade took up residence in the space above his eye once more, and above that, my head blotted out the light of the moon.

The man was silent. He wanted me to break the quiet, and I wasn’t in the mood for Lycon mind games, so I did.

“Give me everything you know on your general.” A vague request, so I tightened the focus.

“Start with a name.”

I’m sure he contemplated spitting at me, but knew whatever liquid he summoned would simply lose that fight and hit him in the face. Instead, he stared, a look I knew well. They didn’t teach it on Lycos, but you picked it up just the same, from your teachers and older children and fellow classmates more in-the-know than you. Tears and whimpers and bewilderment got you nowhere on Lycos.

So I grabbed the lobe of his right ear with my free hand, stretched the extremity as far as it would go without much thought to pain, and placed the knife against the line of pulled skin. We exchanged a single look, only a beat in this little act, and then I pressed harder and pulled back with my armed hand, letting the knife bite hungrily into his flesh.

A broken nose and black eyes and dislocated bones are fixable. They aren’t lost. But a finger or a tongue or an ear or a cock to a blade cannot be replaced. It’s something taken from a man that cannot be given back. It’s dramatic. And permanent; absolute loss is not something man takes well to.

“Niko,” he spoke clearly and with purpose. It was almost a shout.

I stopped.

Something rose in me, like vomit after a meal of bad meat. It reached my neck and grabbed hold of my throat, and for a moment, breath simply escaped me, like my mind forgot how much it needed air.

The feeling reached my head, and it transformed into something dank and airy. My mind felt like it was floating in a soup of nothing, above a body of stone. I felt myself stare, felt my jaw clench and seize, felt my eyes widen and my gaze intensify.

I placed the glinting blade over his eye once again. That name echoed in my head and grabbed my heart with a hand of cold stone and shriveled my stomach.

“Are you lying?” It was a growl. Low and feral, leaking rage.

“No.” He paused. The knife didn’t waver. He looked into the point, then focused on my face hovering above it, closer now, not reeling back from shock but reeling in. He took in my expression, and then continued:

“Niko of Lycos.” He saw my eyes, and I obviously couldn’t look for myself to see what I looked like. But the expanding hole in my stomach was growing, throwing acid into my body and sending lightning into my brain, and that must have been communicated to him somewhere in my face, because he continued.

“He was brought with a sister. Years ago. She ran and they never found her.”

The confirmation I needed. The words made my mouth turn to sand and I found a response hard to form. I felt some sort of ethereal force on my wrist, making me painfully aware of the simple black line etched into my skin.

Then the rage began.

It sang, grasped for something to hold and shatter with its strength.

And then its song fell away and it screamed in terror and pain and a harsh veil fell over my eyes and mind.

I dug the blade into the soldier’s eye until it stopped on something solid, watching the face it occupied go from shock as it entered, to surprise as the pain bloomed, to confusion as soul slipped away into the night. It finally settled on a curious sideways glance as his remaining eye rolled away from my knife.

The woman was still there when I turned. I caught a glimpse of pale skin, either bleached by moonlight or drained of blood as I barreled past. Then a hand grabbed at me, and the rage screamed once more and fire sparked as I grabbed the limb and threw its owner into the wall opposite her with blind movement.

She shouted at the impact of stone against flesh and made an empty noise as she hit the sand. I stared  as she took shallow, useless gasps in, and then finally broke through the barrier of pain to intake cool night air. My hands and feet burned to kick and hit something, and she would do fine as a target. Yet I held back.

Instead, I punched the same wall I threw her into hard enough to split skin and draw blood and kicked a stray plank of wood with enough force to send it shattering into the structure opposite.

“Where are you going?” She asked with difficulty. Her body and movements communicated simple pain, but her eyes told me a story of terror. Terror of being left alone once again with a camp of soldiers. Terror of men grabbing her, hurting her. Terror of me, now. Just as general Harriadis taught us.

In answer, I threw the gold, still on my hip, into the sand in front of her eyes. I sheathed the knife and turned away.

“You said you would do this!” She tried to scream from the ground. Her voice was fury and panic.

It was drowned out by the thick stone walls and murmur of slight conversation as I entered the kapalia. Occupants turned to look at the new arrival, sizing up for a possible fight or something as intimate but not as bloody. I wasn’t of interest to anyone but the merchant, who looked me up and down with crooked smile and grinning eyes sheened with alcohol.

His interest piqued even more as I approached the counter he sat at and slammed my hand down beside his cup.

“When do you leave town?”

The hasty approach and sudden noise had garnered attention, and the words had garnered curiosity. He looked at me with head tilted and brow arched. Others around me looked with confusion. I had been a subtle staple of their life for half a year now. I felt nothing in return, even below the panicked anger.

Others still looked with concern, and I knew those were the other givers of the gold I had been holding moments ago.

“A day, day and a half. I still have many wonderful things to sell.” The last half was said with a drunken smile and a shake of the head, as if he didn’t quite believe it and knew I didn’t either.

“One hundred gold if you leave tonight,” I told him through still-hard breaths.

He simply stared at me. His look was bewilderment and amusement both. Through squinted eyes and a smile thick with alcohol, he responded.

“How do I know you won’t rob me and leave me alone, in a ditch, on the road?”

“Yes or no.” I stated, biting off his last word with the start of mine. His tone was languid, even slower still compared to the storm racing through my body.

The eyes on me were bringing a feeling to the surface I hadn’t confronted in years. It was the same one that got me into a Lycon boat and through an ocean boiling with the Sky Lords rage. Beneath the weight of it, my muscles tensed and my toes and feet began to flex and tap.

He chuckled and turned to stare into his cup. With a moment’s pause and a crooked grin, he drained the dregs from it, and with a flourish, placed it gently on the counter. He rose and gave a low bow to both the man he had been speaking to and the owner.

“I need to gather some things from my home.” The last word was paused and stilted and awkward, dropped from my mouth like an unexpected fruit pit. The stone hut wasn’t a home. But nothing else came to mind to describe it.

“I shall meet you at the cart in ten minutes then, my good lady.”

And then we parted ways. He strolled steadily to his cart, taking his time and making sure of his footing. My feet flung sand as my walking speed increased, until I pounded along the ground in a sprint, hoping the woman was gone and didn’t give chase to my fleeing form.

As I ran, muscles beginning to melt and hands beginning to shake from the lightning flushing from my veins, I could hear the question the merchant would ask me when I returned.

Where to?

Nothing came to mind. I couldn’t conjure a place I wanted to flee back to.

Anywhere. Just leave this village.

As I settled on that answer, as unsatisfactory as it was, I heard another voice echo past the merchants. The now-dead soldier, speaking from beyond the grave, a whisper in my mind.

Niko of Lycos. He was brought with a sister. Years ago. She ran away and they never found her.