Darkness carved in bone

Chapter 34

Mørk

Ten better be dead. That was all Mørk could think about as he stepped out into the cold and blistering winter evening. The horse beneath him took an impatient step forward, but Mørk held the reins tightly, not allowing the movement as he waited for a troop of soldiers to pass him. All of them saluted him, of course. He was the ranking officer among them. The slight fear in some of their eyes at the sight of him, made him stifle a smug smile as his back straightened just a bit. He gave some of the men a curt nod, but just the once he recognized. He didn't bother with men he could not remember. In his mind that meant they weren't worthy to even be saved in his memories. So, he usually ignored the men he didn't remember. But the ones that he did remember, he would not soon forget their faces. They at least had some asset he would observe and evaluate, to see if they could ever rival his position. And if they did...

He would not be bettered by any of these young pups. No, he had worked too hard for his position, and he would not let anyone take this from him.

And that was where Ten came in. He craved Ten's position, felt he deserved it. Not that... that boy. He wouldn't even call him a man even though they were practically the same age. No, Ten was a thorn in his side. One he could never best or surpass no matter his qualifications or skills. So, the only option was that Ten had to either be dead or die. Then he could perhaps gain his position. The one he deserved.

He lessened the reins and the horse started moving, moving away from the barracks and through the gate that led him into the city. The gravel in the snow shifted underneath the horse. He made sure to hide his face in his hood and behind the black wool scarf. There were some people in this city that did not like him, did not like what he represented, and he didn't have time for any squabbles now. It was better to travel unnoticed.

The stench from the grey district hit his nose as he entered it. It was filled with the rats that didn't work, just begged, thieved and whored. If he needed such needs fulfilled, he used the cloaked whorehouse and taverns closer to the palace. Or he got them sent to his rooms, avoiding leaving the palace at all. He usually tried to avoid this part of town as much as he could, but now it lay between him and the closest gate through the city wall. The sad stone huts and houses that filled the grey district looked as if they shivered with coldness as he passed them. The stone walls were covered with ice and snow, telling the tale of people who could not even buy enough warmth for themselves. Pathetic. The positive thing about the cold was that it at least weakened the stank some, did not let it pass to the better parts of town. The sad sight before him made him even more eager to leave the city behind. Eager to fulfill his mission. Eager to see if he indeed would find Ten's frozen and maimed corpse outside the city.

The flicker of something golden in the corner of his eyes made him nearly jump in his saddle. But he forced his body to stay still, as he cursed under his breath. He still pushed his heels deeper into the horse's sides, beckoning for it to move faster, to get him out of here though.

A light snowfall fell as he exited the gate, the soldiers not even glancing at his masked appearance. He gave the tree that stood as much guard as the useless soldiers a glance, its leaves crushingly brown and sad. The weather had not been kind to the once so proud sapling.

The queen's eager and relentless eyes flashed before his eyes and her voice roared in his mind. Her eyes had been filled with steel and ice when she had ordered him out, out to find Ten. It was perhaps the only true sentiment he had ever seen from her when it came to Ten. And that sentiment meant two things. It meant that her frozen heart perhaps was not so frozen after all. And it meant that she now truly feared that something might have happened to him. The first thing brought hate and fire into his heart, the other brought endless glee and delight. He prayed to the moon that the queen was right. He even gave the pale and partly obscured moon a nod in greeting as the horse walked steadily on the broad path that led out into the wilderness. That led to the south and the light territories where the sun reigned.

Mørk started imagining the various ways that Ten might have died, the one more horrible and humiliating than the other. But as he moved southward, he found that not even the hatred he felt for Ten could match the hate he felt for the sun-lickers.

They had taken too much from his queendom. A covert mission to the south some years ago had confirmed every prejudice and story he had heard before. The memory of a golden-haired girl with honey brown eyes stabbed into his gut and mind, her skin glittering with the poisonous sun at their chance encounter in the woods.

She had smiled at him and asked him if he was one of the Vandrars that had set up camp a day ago. He could still remember how he had stood there completely frozen and dumbfounded as one of the sun's creatures had talked to him. There had been nothing inside him in that moment. He had imagined he would have been filled with bubbling hate and distaste when meeting light-scum. Instead it had been quiet in his mind and body. The only thing he could remember was thinking that there had been something pleasing with her eyes, a thought that had made a violent and murderous chaos erupt inside him. A thought that still made shame burn through his body. But he had dealt with it, dealt with her. His arm moving without his own consent through the chaos within him. Given her a knife to the gut, a slash across her throat.

He had stood there for a moment as life ebbed out of her, watched as her red blood stained the snow below her as she frantically tried to stop the blood from pouring out of her with her now blood red mittens. Until her body stilled, and only those honey-brown eyes stared at him. Stared at him beyond death. Still stared at him. She had cursed him; he was sure of it. Cursed him so that he would be haunted by those eyes and the memory of their encounter forever. To remind him of the coward he had been when she had talked to him. How he hadn't been able to act, until the blade stood from her stomach, and he had already understood that it was too late for her. Perhaps it had been too late for him as well.

That golden hair still haunted him. Even during his training to become a soldier to defeat the light ones, he had not thought he would kill without provocation, a civilian. A defenseless girl. His hand went instinctively to the dagger in his belt, the one he had killed her with, as if to reassure himself that he would not do that again. Not act so dishonorable again. So recklessly and uncontrolled. Because those were traits he did not identify with, he was nothing like that. In that twilight in the woods he had not been himself.

Every time those honey-brown eyes looked at him, glanced at him from the shadows, hid in his nightmares, flashed before him in meetings with the queen, stole seconds of concentration from him, his hate for the light ones grew. It had grown inside him for so long, becoming a festering lump of terror, shame and angst. Of revenge and anger.

She had been light-filth, a sun-whore. It was good riddance to be rid of her. One less light-scum was a better world in his eyes. Those thoughts played on repeat in his mind. Day and night. It was the only cure he had found to that never-ending shake of his hand after that kill, the unsteady hand that had pushed that dagger through her skin and tendons. But such thoughts stilled that hand. Let it seize the very dagger that had done the deed with a calm and steady hand. Just like he was, calm and steady.

Ten's decision and determination to go out and look for and eliminate the threat of the prophecy was perhaps the only redeeming quality he had ever shown. It had proved his dedication to their joint cause. That his hatred for them was as strong as his. That he too wanted to eliminate them from their lands. To bath their lands in eternal and powerful darkness.

But it still didn't mean that he didn't want him dead. It didn't mean that he didn't scan the snow for unnatural bumps in hope to find Ten's body buried underneath the snow.

No, Ten better be dead, or he might just have to do something about it. His hand twitched at his dagger, gripping it reassuringly again. But perhaps with Ten he should not show that restraint he had held on for dear life ever since the encounter with the light girl. Perhaps not, he thought as he let go of the dagger and beckoned the horse to move into a gallop as he ventured into the wildness and looming south beyond.