Curse Of Blood: Gods & Monsters

Chapter LX⎮Brenna

The funereal gloom was thick tonight despite the tall flames of the pyres splashing their light athwart the mountainside. But their dead might have numbered in the hundreds if not for Renic's beast. The victory had been theirs this day — the Greybacks and the Blackmanes — and though the moon no longer burned at its full force in the twilight sky, the villagers had left their sacrifices, the blótdyr, at the edge of the blood forest in gratitude. There the oblations would remain until the beast in the woods took what was owed him; and the cycle, she envisaged, would likely endure perpetuation, outlasting even the lengths of her children's life-threads.

Her children, she mused with a contented sigh. Freyja had seen fit to starve the poison from her womb and so preserve Renic's child; although she was inordinately surprised she was far more thankful. Besides which it was not for her to question the gods. Freyja's will mirrored Loki's and that was enough for her. Freyja she trusted.

"I charge you both to ensure the amulet finds its way to the eldest daughter of your direct line," Loki had said to them. Brenna's thumb brushed back and forth over the twin ravens within the disc, hanging from a thong around her neck, as she slipped quietly into the noisome hall and thence into the passageway beyond.

Regardless of his requisition, the periapt was not his to bestow but Heida's. Yet her friend had pushed it back at Brenna when she'd tried to return it earlier. "I have no need of it, let it serve my sister instead," she'd said, kissing each of Brenna's cheeks. And so it was Brenna's now, and with it so too had she inherited the sylvan voices. The wisdom of the ravens.

Hesitating only a brief moment, Brenna parted the doorway's fur hanging with a hand that seemed far more certain, far more confidant, than her poor heart, and thus stepped into the room she had left only that morning. His chamber.

Renic sat in one of the sturdy chairs by the trestle, shoulders hunched and face buried in his hands, but as she entered he looked up. The blood had long since been cleansed from his flesh, and he looked hale and powerful, despite his grim sobriety, like a god himself. Gods, but she loved this man. Even in the darkened room his eyes were bright and penetrating as he watched her dilatory approach. At length she stood before him, wondering what to say that might ease the strain from his shoulders and dilute the tension from the air.

But it was he that spoke first. "Aila..." So reverently did he say his mother's name that she felt her eyes well anew.

"I know." Aila had been like a second mother to her.

"And Bjorn is dead too." And in that curt remark was conveyed all his anguish, all his shame and fury. "I killed him."

"No!" she remonstrated, her words sharp, "not you. The valdyr."

"Tis the same thing, woman." He stood up and turned away to lean over the trestle, giving her his side, dragging a frustrated hand through his hair as he glowered at the scarred wood.

"If you are one and the same then why did you not stop yourself from killing him?"

He shot her a glare over his shoulder, her logic clearly unappreciated. "I am a monster."

"A monster that defeated our enemy, perhaps; one that ensured his clansmen and women were not snuffed from this world. Nay, I tell you now Thorgny is the monster." She laid a hand on his flanks, feeling the taut sinews twitch beneath her fingers. "And Roth ensured that man's spirit would pollute not even Hel's realm hereafter." As he'd told it, there was nothing recognizable left of the bastard now.

"Bjorn—"

"Bjorn's body lies intact — you saw for yourself — and he died defending your people. He died with a sword in his hand and a war cry on his lips; he feasts in Valhalla even now, Renic." She could see that he listened, his head angled attentively, her wisdom affecting him as she'd hoped. "And I bethink that if you truly were as monstrous as you say then you'd have smote me when you had the chance?"