Talon: The Windwalker Archive (Book 1) (13 page)

“
You don’t have to tell us,” said Akkeri, rubbing his shoulder.

“
Yes, I do,” he said wiping his nose.

Jahsin
took a moment to get ahold of himself. He regarded the two of them with quick, darting eyes, unable to hold a gaze. “Vaka Brekken was my brother,” he finally said in a shuddering breath. He groaned in effort to suppress the tears. “Was my fault how he treated you, Tal. He saw you with me outside the house of healin’, and from that day out he had you in his sights. He treated every real friend I ever had the same way. Majhree insisted you bunk with me, else I would have never brought his attention to you. I’m sorry,”

“
That’s why he never killed you for sticking up for me,” Talon surmised.

Jahsin only nodded.

“And I got him killed,” Akkeri said solemnly.

Jahsin shook his head
. “You did what you did for good reason. He raped your sister, got her pregnant, sent the Vald after her. You didn’t know he was my brother. Would it have mattered? He got what was coming to him.”

Talon didn’t know what their relationship was like. He gues
sed it had always been bad. Jahsin was a good-natured man, and likely wished his brother would have been his friend. Jahsin’s tears fell for what might have been and what never would be, rather than for what was. While Brekken was alive, there had always been a chance he would warm up to his little brother. Now that chance was gone, and all that remained were bad memories of a violent and bitter bully who had himself been a product of violence and bullying.

“
It’s all right, Jahsin; if it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have survived here. I never had a friend in the Timber Wolf village. I would take two of you if I could, Vaka brother and all,” said Talon.

Jahsin laughed
and some of the sorrow left his eyes. He reached across with his good arm and gave Talon a brotherly hug that was returned in kind. They opened their arms to let Akkeri in and the three huddled together, laughing at the stupidity of their bickering.

“
It’s us against the world,” said Talon, “us against the world.”

Tears, tears in the dark; taken, he fights himself.

—G
retzen Spiritbone, 4981

Talon’s d
reams were of blood and falling swords. Brekken came after him, cradling his severed head in one arm, and carrying a long flaming sword in the other. Laughter filled the foggy air around him but was lost in the crash of waves against the rocky shore. He stumbled about the sharp stones, flailing in the foamy waters as the raft carrying Jahsin and Akkeri drifted further from his grasp. Behind him the baying of wolves joined in the song of Brekken’s obscenities. He dared not look, for he knew the entire Timber Wolf Village was on his heels. Talon sloshed out into water up to his waist and dove in. The harder he swam, the farther out to sea the wind carried the raft, filling its patchwork sails with great gulps of air. The Vald crashed into the waves behind him and he began to sink. Hands suddenly clutched at his ankles and feet, pulling him down. He kicked and tried to swim, but the hands held him firm, pulling him down…down…

“
Talon, wake up!” Jahsin said, shaking him.

He woke with a scream and clutched Jahsin’s shirt.

“Talon, it’s Akkeri; hurry up!”

He jolted out of bed hal
f-awake, hoping he was dreaming.

“
Where?” he said, bolting for the door in only his trousers.

“
I don’t know what’s going on. Majhree told me to get you quick, said they took her. She was crying. I don’t know.”

Talon ran to Majh
ree’s hut as fast as the rain and mud would allow. The rain came down at an angle, spurred on by the high winds. He fell more than once, and by the time he arrived at her hut, he was soaking wet and dragging mud.

“
What happened?” he yelled as he flew through the door.

Majhree
sat on one of the cots, bent so far that her chest rested on her knees; she was crying. Talon fell to his knees before her and took up her gnarled hands, wet with tears.

“
What happened, Majhree; where is Akkeri?”

The old woman’s eyes fell on hi
m, and she seemed to forget her own sorrow, for her face went slack and pity found his gaze. Her hands went to his face and held him tight before uttering words she knew would send him running through the door.

“
Fylkin sent his men after Akkeri…they took her…took her back to him.”

Talon turned to bolt for the door
, but Majhree’s hands grabbed his wrists and held him firm.

“
Akkeri gave her friend a letter when she heard they were comin’ for her. She gave it to me and made me promise I’d see you read it afore you ran out the door. This is Akkeri’s wish,” said Majhree, looking to the folded paper on the bed beside her.

Behind them
, Jahsin reached the doorway panting. Talon nodded to Majhree and she reluctantly let him go and handed him the paper. He unfolded the letter with shaking hands.

Talon,

Word has come to me that Fylkin Winterthorn has claimed me as one of his personal slaves.

Please
, Talon, do nothing.

Do not come for me. I will
see you on the night we have shared in our dreams. On that night I will be ready, and I will look for you where a boy fished with his wolf pup.

I love you
, Talon Windwalker, with all of my heart and soul. And though my skin may be torn and my blood may spill, my heart will ever be yours, untouched by any but you, unseen by any but you, unfelt by any but you.

Akkeri

Talon’s hands shook with rage and his tears mingled with those long dried upon the page. He no longer noticed Majhree sitting on the bed or Jahsin at the door. He saw only the letter and the words “I love you.” He imagined what the giant chiefson would do to her, what he might be doing now. He saw her red hair in the clutches of his big hands.

He shot
for the door with murder on his mind.

“
Talon, wait, think about this,” Jahsin warned, barring the door.

“
Get out of my way,” he grumbled.

“
I can’t.”

“
Get out of my way,” he warned.

“
It’s suicide, Tal,” Jahsin pleaded.

“
Get out of my way, now!” he screamed, shoving Jahsin. His friend would not budge. He clung to the doorway with his one hand and his stump pressed firmly against it.

“
Think about the escape, Talon; think about Chief! Getting yourself killed isn’t going to help either of them!”

Talon lunged to punch him in the face
, and the big man grabbed him in a bear hug. They crashed out into the rainy night and rolled through the mud. Talon struggled against Jahsin’s grip, but he refused to let go. Jahsin had shifted into a choke hold, with his good arm grabbing the end of his stump, which was pressed up under Talon’s chin, cutting off his air.

Talon desperately scraped at
Jahsin’s eyes and attempted to box his ears, but his position afforded him no leverage. He choked and sputtered obscenities that were never heard, as the light of the world began to dim at the edges of his vision. All strength left him and he felt himself falling…falling…falling.

T
he world went black.

Talon awoke in Majhree’s house of healing. She sat in a chair across from the bed, and Jahsin stood next to the closed door. His friend’s head was bandaged and his left eye covered. He nodded to Talon guardedly. The letter quivering in Majhree’s hands made the only sound. She handed it to him.

“
We can’t keep you here forever, nor should we. But we want you to think about this for a moment before you run off and get yourself killed by the Vald,” said Majhree from her crooked position.

“
There’s still a chance you three can escape, even that wolf of yours. There’s still a chance, now, in this moment, but you go out that door seeking revenge, you’ll never get off this island ’less given a sea burial. You leave, you go through the door, and you ain’t never gonna see Akkeri or Chief again. Is the truth. We is Skomm, we is of mind, and
they
is of body. If you is to beat them, it be with your mind, for they’ll crush you beneath their feet should you raise hand against ‘em. Heed Akkeri’s words, respect her wishes, and you may yet see her smile.”

She got up from the chair an
d patted him on the shoulder, lingering by his side for many moments. Finally she turned and Jahsin opened the door for her. He looked back at Talon with sorrow weighing down his brow.

“
There’s still a chance, Tal; stay with me, buddy,” he said and closed the door behind him.

Talon read the letter again and again. With e
very other heartbeat he wanted to crash through the door and run back to the hut for Jahsin’s axe. He pictured himself tearing into the surprised Vald. Heads set with shocked expressions spun on the ground in his wake. He would hunt down Fylkin and watch him die. Talon got up more than once and headed for the door, and more than once Akkeri’s words stayed his hand. He paced the hut, growing more agitated by the minute. He could see nothing but Akkeri’s pained face and hear nothing but her helpless cries. She needed him
now
! He punched the door and tore at his hair as he slid down the wall. His only salvation, his only road to sanity, was contained within those three words smeared upon the page.

I love you

The rain fell as if conjured by the gods themselves and did not relent for hours. Talon paced the room all night and twice began to push the door open. No one barred his way. He stared into the downpour with eyes that had no tears left. In his mind Akkeri’s voice spoke the words of the letter:

Please, Talon, do nothing.

Do not come for me. I will see you on the night we have shared in our dreams. On that
night I will be ready, and I will look for you where a boy fished with his wolf pup.

When again the visions of her crying beneath Fylkin’s giant form drove him to the door, her words spoke in the rain.

I love you.

He finally collapsed, exhausted, in a heap next to the door. His breath came in shuddering gasps and his heart raced with all the rage boiling within his soul. He would heed her words. He would do nothing.

There’
s still a chance,
he told himself over and over.

There’
s still a chance.

He vowed t
hen that if he ever got off this gods-forbidden rock, he would return one day. And he would have Fylkin’s head.

The laws of my people stay my hand; how I wish to strike them down.

—
Azzeal, 4996

Talon woke in the morning thinking he had waken
ed from a terrible nightmare. The tear-stained letter in his clutching grip reminded him the nightmare had been real. The same strong urge to run to Timber Wolf Village and rescue Akkeri plagued him, but he resisted. They were right. Talon was a Skomm; he stood no chance against a giant Vald. He was small, weak, Plagueborn, a curse upon his family and friends. He knew he would get them into trouble; he wished he had been man enough to leave on his own and stow away on one of the many merchant ships that came in the spring. If he would have left when he first realized he would be their doom, Akkeri would not be Fylkin’s slave. Talon hated himself for what had happened to her; he would never forgive himself. He had never deserved her attention.

In that moment
, Talon wished that he had never met Akkeri and that she had gone about her life without the shadow of Talon’s curse darkening her days and extinguishing her future. His actions had led her to her fate. He alone would be responsible for her every pain. He vowed then to make her pain his and to push himself to the brink of death and beyond, if need be, to right his wrongs. He would push himself every day in the mines, and he would bleed her blood.

“
As Thodin is my witness, I will free you both from this hellhole!” Talon screamed at the heavens.

T
he door opened and Jahsin peered in with one meek eye.

“
You want company?”

Talon nodded to the chair beside his bed
, and his friend came in the room and closed the door as if a bear slept in the corner. He walked timidly to the side of the bed and sat down. His eyes jumped quickly from the floor to Talon’s eyes, and back down again. Talon saw what his nails had done to his friend’s face, and a lump grew again in his throat.

“
Jahsin, I’m sorry. I…”

“
You did what any man would do, and I did what any friend would,” said Jahsin, meeting his gaze. “She’s my friend too, Tal; I feel your pain. We all do. Only yours is all of ours combined, and burnin’ in your belly like the midday sun.”

Talon was grateful to ha
ve Jahsin at his side. He might’ve seemed a right jolly village idiot to some, but Talon knew better, as did anyone able to look beyond his squinting eyes, his big, stupid smile, and his stump of an arm.

Jahsin saw things
others did not. He could read a person with a glance and an open ear, and gauge the mood of a room from the doorway. With his one hand he accomplished more in a day than many did with two. His disability drove him to keep up with everybody else to such an extent that he often surpassed them. He felled trees all day with only what the gods had given him. To Talon he was worth a dozen Vald, one-armed or not.

“
I’m going to get her back, Jah. I’m going to get Chief back too.”

“
I know you are, Tal.”

“
Then we’re getting off of this gods-forsaken island,” Talon promised.

Talon pushed himself to the breaking point in the mines every day thereafter. He went about every job with reckless abandon, driven by the images incessantly playing in his mind. He saw Akkeri everywhere, and he took his frustration out on the pick axe, imagining Fylkin’s face was on every rock he split. When Talon was pushing the cart, he imagined shoving Fylkin into a burning pit of lava. Every stone he carried was one to be dropped on the chiefson’s head. He began to hope that Fylkin would come after him during Freista. Majhree said Talon had to beat them with his mind, and he intended to.

When he could not stand Akkeri’s imagined cries any longer
, he did something to gain the attention of Vaka Groegon’s whip. He began to crave the pain, the reminder. Every lash scar was a penance for his crimes; every one of his silent cries was an echo of hers. When the whipping failed to silence the visions of her pain, he incited further beatings from the Vaka. A mark had been on his head since Kelda Agaeti. The Vaka understood that Talon’s arse belonged to Chiefson Fylkin—that they could bruise it but not break it. Vaka Groegon was particularly skilled at inflicting pain without real damage, and Talon welcomed it all.

With Akkeri gone
, Majhree asked Jahsin to collect apothecary supplies with Talon during the nights. She assured them that she had gained approval from the new Vaka who had replaced Brekken.

Th
ey began to piece together the parts of the raft in the dark of night. Neither of them got much sleep, but neither of them cared. Jahsin had procured half of the rope they would need and expected the other half well before the start of summer. They had yet to find a sail. Finding a used one proved impossible; sails were not often discarded but rather stitched and repaired. They had progressed in other areas, however; already the rudder was half finished. Jahsin found a suitable piece of hardwood and cut out the dimensions.

They had been at it e
very night for two weeks, whittling down the rudder to the right shape with the best tool they could find for the job. Talon had gotten the idea one night while they were gathering clover. He returned to where he had freed the lynx and found the skinning knife where he had left it. Talon didn’t care if he got caught with it; he would slit the throat of the Vaka who found it. He had noticed Jahsin’s concerned looks, which he gave more as the weeks passed by. Talon didn’t care.

He and
Jahsin were assigned to collect wet-weed almost daily. Majhree sold it off to make the cover story seem legitimate, and more orders came down the line from healers who swore it had special properties. Talon used the time at sea to get to know Vaka Bjorn. Jahsin had initially been wary about the idea, but after a few days around the man, he agreed there might be something more to him.

They learned from the other Skomm that Vaka Bjorn had gained
his title only five years ago, after the previous Vaka was killed by one of the fishing crews. The entire crew had been executed and their heads set to pikes near the docks, but the warning did nothing to quell the Skomm sailors. They had always been the hardest of the Throwbacks to control, and therefore one of their own had been chosen to oversee the docks. Vaka Bjorn was well-liked and highly respected among the Skomm fisherman, and he successfully managed the rowdy sailors. One of his tricks was forbidding any spirit but wine for the fishermen. Liquor and ale made them far too agitated. The wine, on the other hand, put them in a right jolly mood, and the songs of the drunken sailors were many.

“
What are the sails made of?” Talon asked one day while the ship headed back to collect the first of the nets put out in the morning.

Vaka Bjorn gave him a curious glance
as he watched billowing sails. “They’re made of hemp, sometimes flax,” he said.

Talon didn’t want to pr
ess the subject as he felt suspect talking to a Vaka about such things. As it turned out, he didn’t have to.

“
Them eyelets in each corner, them called cringles,” Bjorn explained. “The top rod there works in unison with them ropes at the bottom corners to keep the sail taut.”

Talon nodded as he mentally took note of the details.

“Why you ask?” he asked suddenly, and Talon was left with his mouth gaping.

“
Ugh. I don’t know. I was thinking it would be easier and more productive for the fishing if we had a small boat to get the seaweed ourselves.”

The words came out of Talon’s mouth before he knew what he was saying. His eyes went wide and he averted his gaze to the sun high above.

“That’s not a bad idea,’ said Bjorn. “The weed is in high demand,” he added with a sideways glance of silent understanding. “Say I was to procure such a boat. What you think it’s worth to Majhree?”

Talon
realized he was in the midst of negotiating an underground deal with a Vaka. His mind scrambled to remember why he trusted the man.
Could it be a setup?
he wondered. No, he trusted the man. He didn’t know why, it was just a feeling—one he prayed was correct. He tried to remember the terminologies of traders but his mind only came up with, “twenty-five percent.”

Vaka Bjorn looked down on him with
a stern eye, and Talon worried he had been made. “Thirty percent,” the captain finally muttered.

“
Deal!” Talon blurted and spit in his hand, offering it to the man.

Bjorn eyed
the offered hand and then suspiciously at the working crewmen. He turned to face the rail and shook Talon’s hand quickly.

“
I’ll get you a small, single-sailed keipr
,
small enough you and your friend can manage. The boat’ll be ready in a week. But it’s gonna cost you. We’ll take it out of the profits ’til the balance is paid in full; then the split begins,” said Vaka Bjorn.

“
Agreed,” Talon grinned.

What the
Feikinstafir just happened?
he thought as he left Bjorn to bark orders to his crewmen.

“
You ain’t gonna believe this,” he whispered to Jahsin as he joined him at the rail.

“
What?” Jahsin asked, leaning in conspiratorially.

“
I’ll tell you when we’re on land,” Talon assured him.

After the ship returned to the docks and they were safely alone walking back to the Skomm village, Talon f
illed Jahsin in on the deal he had made with Vaka Bjorn.

“
Our own boat?” Jahsin said, amazed. “How in the hells you manage that?”

Talon shrugged with a grin.
“I don’t know, it just sort of happened.”

“
Fylkin gets wind of this, he’s never gonna let it happen,” said Jahsin.

“
I don’t see why not. Our seaweed is in high demand right now. We’ve been on three trips this week alone. You have to remember: nobody has a clue what we’re up to. So what if a couple Skomm have access to their own puny keipr? Plenty of Skomm already do.”

Jahsin laughed nervously as they passed two Vald headed to
the docks. Once they were out of earshot, he leaned in to whisper though no one was around.

‘You’re not
just
another Skomm, Tal.”

“
Don’t worry; everything’s coming together,” Talon assured him.

“
You sure we can trust Bjorn? Might be a setup.”

“
What would be the point in setting us up? They can kill us anytime they want.”

“
You got a point,” said Jahsin. “Just seems too good to be true. What about the raft? We should take it apart and get rid of the evidence.”

Talon shook his head.
“I think we should keep on with it as a backup plan. Better to have two plans than one. Plus we now have access to a sail and more rope if we need it. Once the profits from the wetweed start coming in, we can have a little accident and lose the sail or sink the keipr and take the sail. Vaka Bjorn will get us a new one.”

Jahsin nodded with a growing smile next to him.
“You got it all worked out, don’t you?”

“
Majhree said we gotta beat them with our minds. We
have
to think of everything,” said Talon.

They returned to the village to find a note from Majhree tacked to the door of the hut. The letter beckoned Talon to come by when he got in. He wasted no time and headed straight for the house of healing. When he got there, Majhree was tending to a Skomm woman with multiple whiplashes across her back. Majhree and a small Skomm girl were applying the thick salve.

“
Ah, Talon, come in,” she urged him and reached into her pocket as she turned from her patient.

Talon came in close and she handed
off a piece of paper. “See it’s burned when you done reading it,” she urged.

Talon’s
heart leapt with anticipation; he knew it was a note from Akkeri. He removed himself to one of the curtained beds at the other end of the room and with shaking hands unfolded the letter. It read, “Ever are you close to my heart and mind; I love you.”

He turn
ed the letter over, thinking he had missed something, but he had not. He read the sentence again a dozen times and reluctantly burned it. It did his heart well to hear from her, but he found himself focusing on the things she hadn’t said, which were many. She hadn’t said that she was doing well, that she wasn’t in pain. The short message had a finality to it that left him feeling hollow. He tried to tell himself that she had written in haste and that she would have said more if she had the time, but he remained unconvinced.

Majhree
left the girl and shuffled over to speak to him.

“
How is she?” Majhree asked with an expectant smile.

“
She didn’t say; just said she was thinking of me.”