Darkness carved in bone

Chapter 39

Ten

Ten was still numb from what had just occurred. Or not just occurred. He had banged on the wooden gate for an hour begging them to let him in again. None had heeded his call. So, he had started wandering aimlessly through Njårdsaltvy. Dragging his body through the dirty and dusty streets of the dark city. He didn't know how much time had passed since he had watched Helen being dragged away from him.

He didn't see anything as he walked across the upper most level of the city, walking among the polished houses that had housed so many of the people he had grown up with. He felt like a stranger in the city he had used to think of as home, so unusual and distant from him now. Everything felt so completely meaningless if she wasn't with him.

It had not been for himself that he had begged at the gate, but for her, for Helen. He didn't care if he was banished from the palace that he had called his home, he didn't even care if his mother hated him and called him a traitor, all he cared about was getting to her. Save her, to find some way to stop the inevitable death she was now facing. The mere thought of her death sent bile rising in his throat. He felt like shit, he felt like the traitor he had been accused of being, but not because of the reasons his mother had given, but for the fact that he had been too slow, too weak and too fragile to save Helen.

He had ridden through night and day to reach her before Mørk brought her to the palace, but he had even been too late for that as well. The wound Mørk had handed to him had needed tending to, so he had lost precious hours as a healer had worked on him. As soon as it was done, he had ridden Shiny as if the rising sun were at his heels. He had in fact not even stopped when the sun had loomed in the horizon. He had let the agonizing pain of the sun blast through him as he rode and rode towards her, but he had been too late. All he had done, had not been enough. He was not enough.

He looked around himself, as if he needed to distract himself from his dire thoughts for a moment and realized he had reached the second level of the city. He had not even noticed that he had walked through the third level. The second level consisted of houses and market squares scattered across the level. It was also where the public school lay, where everyone in Njårdsaltvy were given their education. Ten had never gone there, but he had felt the sting of jealousy as he had walked by the school as a child, seeing all those children playing so freely, while he was constantly haunted by his tutors wherever he walked.

Perhaps it was not so strange that he now considered walking there, going to that yard in front of the school that had felt so much like a world he was not allowed to take part in when he was younger. Now that he had been cast out and labeled a traitor to his kin, perhaps he was allowed into that place after all? He took a step forward, but his feet slouched underneath him, making the trek over to the building impossibly long.

His body should be aching with pain from the strain he had put his body through these past days, but he felt nothing. The wound in his abdomen was nothing either, he could barely feel the stiffness from the blood that had poured out of the wound when the stitches had ripped during his days of hard riding. He was completely numb. Numb and useless. He was a useless traitor.

His numbness turned into shame at the thought. He was a traitor who had toasted and laughed with the man who had killed his father, who had then indirectly killed his unknown baby brother. He could never forgive himself for that. Not even if he had not known who he had been drinking with, he could not, would not ever forgive himself for that.

His head buzzed and he felt like he was being overwhelmed with shame at the mere thought of what he had done. How he had betrayed the memory of his father through his actions.

He couldn't believe he had had a baby brother. Or perhaps he could believe it, now that he knew, he could remember how his mother had changed around the time his brother would have been born. How she had just said that she was sick and would need some time in her room. He could remember how nervous his father had been. It all made sense now. It made sense why he had dreamed, or almost believed he had some faint and strange memories of a brother. Because they were true.